Is your worth measured by what you eat? - Eating (food) has got no moral values..or has it..?-

Is your worth measured by what you eat? -Eating has got no moral values..... or has it...?-

 I am sure you have heard your parents praise you for finishing up your food or eating your veggies. 

" What a good boy/girl, you are...!"- They might have exclaimed.

 I am even ashamed to admit that I have said the very same thing to my children when they finished their meals. 

 I think it just comes naturally....because we grew up hearing it over and over again.

However, as soon as I say these words, I ask myself, how does eating not eating the choices we make about food can make us any better or worse? Why would that make us a good or a bad person? Why would my children be "good" now because they have finished their plateful?  

We live in the world when "healthy eating" is nothing more as a business, when companies are more interested to sell their products, their meal plans, no matter what.....

I believe we are more confused than ever before about what " healthy eating" is. And we are constantly told what is "good' and what is "bad" to eat. We literally mean that eating certain food or even certain time is bad. 

We are also suggested that when we eat foods like; cakes, chocolate, fats food..we are cheating. But when we stick to a '-low this or -low that' and a '-free from this and free from that,' we are doing well.

In fact, we are good. And there is the "clean eating' phenomenon... which seems to suggest that anything else must be dirty. Does that mean, we can no longer eat granny's delicious apple pie, because that is dirty....?

I have struggled with an eating disorder for over 15years, and I had my own ideas and rules about food....

Now, as a recovered anorexic I am looking at eating and food with different eyes, and I am interested to analyze how people 'treat' food and what meanings they attach to eatings, what kind of relationships they develop.

I am sad to discover that those who claim to 'help' people to "eat healthy", 'live healthy", use food to manipulate, and implant guilt and fear into others mind.

I know professional trainers who would tell you to eat well for 6 days ( of course they have their own meaning of " eating well") and after six days you can have a "cheat day", and even bette, you can cheat without feeling guilty.

When I read about these kind of diets, I cannot stop asking these questions : since when is eating has anything to do with cheating? Since when has eating became a game of some sort?

Why should you or me "need" to feel guilty? Why do we have to bring guilt into something as eating which is  necessary to keep us alive...?

Don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that our relationship with food cannot be damaging for us... I know too well. My relationship with food had almost killed me. However, the relationship we have with food has no connection what so ever to any moral values.

You are not a "bad" person if all you eat is chips and ice cream, all day long. Yes, it might have a negative affect on your health (mental and emotional and physical), but still it doesn't make you qualified to be called a "bad/good boy/girl'. Nor you are a "good" person because you followed so and so's "healthy" eating plans for whatever many days or months, years.....

What we do with food doesn't define what we are worth. Food is just food. It is something that we need to put into our body to live, to grow, to function. It is as simple as that.

Your worth is far more beyond what you eat!