Simple Food ~ Sane Life

Last month I had an interesting request from Dr Susan Corso. She asked me to write a blog post about meal replacement bars.

I read this request a few times and thought, is she serious? I knew she was, so what was the catch? Was there some spiritual challenge she had in mind? She knows my philosophy when it comes to food.

Perplexed as I was, I knew the best thing to do was to reply with clear, peaceful honesty.

In general, I am not a fan of the concept known as “meal replacement.” Even if you are having a bar, a shake or a smoothie, even if you are one of the Jetsons and your meals pop out of a machine called the Food-A-Rac-A-Cycle.

I am all about simple food for a less complicated life, so I get that there will be special circumstances where we need to have smaller, easier, often portable, nourishment to get us through our present process.

In Susan’s return email came the special circumstances. She was looking for information for her unique wonderful self in a particular circumstance. Cool! Now we’re cookin’ J That made the response simple and easy.

Because Susan is a lover of raw foods, Larabar was my first choice. The other two bars that I suggested were GoRaw and Macrobars. Susan tells her story in her May 27^th
Seeds blog post

Let’s return to the concept of meal replacement. Walk with me on this …

My initial response is, of course, why would anyone want to replace a meal? Any meal? Our bodies are counting on us for healthy nourishment everywhere in our lives.

Will the real meal please stand up?!

We have been raised in a family of thought that a meal has to be a big production with a balanced variety of foods EACH TIME! Please take that pressure of your plate. I invite you to consider this easy concept:

The word meal is wonderful! Its meaning is of food, time and measurement according to the OED. The emphasis is on time. TIME. FOOD. There is always time for food. And health reflects the food for time, a lifetime. So, the meal replacement concept more appropriately addresses the amount of time we have to spend at any given point in our lives with our food, our bodies and our health.

We can make it all work! It’s really simple. J Look at what the situation is, the amount of time you have, and there are plenty of healthy choices to blend it all together nicely.

Here are some wonderful portable choices to consider:

Fruits: apples, pears, peaches, oranges, bananas, grapes

Veggies: carrots, celery, green beans, sugar snap peas

Nuts and seeds: any and all, raw, unseasoned

Dried fruit: any and all, unsulfured and no added sugar or other additives

Yogurt: organic, unsweetened

Larabar, GoRaw and Macrobars.

Kiwi is one of my favorite fruits. Despite that, I would avoid kiwi sometimes because it is messy and tedious to prepare. Then a friend taught me a cool concept—Kiwi-cups! All I have to do is slice the top off the kiwi, scoop out the sweet fruit flesh with a spoon, and enjoy! This is much easier and healthier than the packaged fruit cups for kids. (Yes, they can be sliced and re-capped ahead of time to pack in lunches!)

As you go forth and make simple, healthy, conscious choices with each food, remember, when it comes to each meal, timing is everything!

Peace,

Karyn