Secondary Food & Diet

In my last blog, I talked about primary foods (what nourishes us off the plate) and how that can affect our health when we are out of balance with our physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. Today I'd love to talk about secondary Food (what nourishes us on our plate, our diet!)

First we know that we all need food to survive, but what the terms of primary and secondary food help emphasise is that where multidimensional beings, we need more than just food to actually thrive. These terms also highlight that nourishment doesn't always mean nutrition. For example, we could feel nourished or fuelled from a beautiful piece of music or through meaningful conversation, we may also feel nourished from enjoying birthday cake with loved ones.. Nourishment takes many forms.

So what is secondary food?

Secondary food is the food that we eat every day, as we like to say, it's the food on our plates. Our secondary food choices are driven by many factors, some of which may not seem connected to diet at all. This is why if we're only looking at diet, we're only seeing a piece of the puzzle. But there are many factors that lead us to choose certain foods, each factor tends to fall under a larger category such as:

• Health

• Lifestyle

• Environment

• Physiological and psychological factors

• Social, cultural and economic factors

• Personal belief system, food relationship, and knowledge of food

Health

Your current health status is likely to be an important consideration when choosing your food, maybe you had something changed with your health recently and you're placing extra emphasis on choosing nutritious foods, or maybe you have a particular health need that leads you to avoid or include certain foods in your diet. For example, if you have high blood pressure you might try to watch your salt consumption. Or if you feel yourself coming down with a cold, you might try to increase your consumption of vitamin C rich foods to help boost your immunity. Next is allergies or sensitivities which affects the food we eat and prepare at home, they can also affect if and where we eat out.

Lifestyle

One of the biggest lifestyle related factors that affects our food choices is stress, depending on the demands of your day. Stressors might be something that you're frequently exposed to, and if you're experiencing a lot of stress you're more likely to crave comfort foods, right? of course, it's a natural response to what's happening in your body.

The next lifestyle factor is habit. It's interesting but sometimes we simply choose something out of habit. Many people can probably relate to wanting a snack in the late afternoon, eventually you grow so accustomed to eating an afternoon snack that you begin to do it without even realising it.

Moving on to the next factor, convenience. If you're like many of us you have a busy lifestyle, so options that are convenient or easy to prepare are a big priority when it comes to the food you eat. As our schedules get busier, we also tend to eat more meals out of the house.

Another lifestyle factor is your activity level. As you already know the more active we are, the more food we need to fuel our activity and vice versa.

Environment

Where you currently live has a big impact on the food that is available to you and what you are able to choose. Not only does your geographic location impact your choices, but your physical environment also plays a role. This includes things like if you live in a city or suburb, an apartment or house, or even the grocery stores and restaurants that you have in your neighbourhood, also the size and features of your kitchen may impact the type of food preparation you may or may not be able to do, it all plays a role.

Another factor related to environment that affects our dietary choices is seasoning, or time of year. We're likely to eat differently depending on the season, and are likely to crave different foods at different times during the year.

Physiological and Psychological

So the first one here is probably obvious, you eat something because you're hungry. Your body is giving you hunger cues to let you know that you're running low on fuel and should eat soon. You might also choose something simply because it appeals to your senses,. Have you ever walked outside a bakery and wanted to pop in because it smelled so wonderful? You probably wouldn't have thought about a baked good otherwise, but since it smelled so good to you all of a sudden, you really wanted to enjoy it, or you might crave something because you feel you need it. Maybe you've been on vacation where you've been eating out for a few days and when you get home you're inspired to cook yourself a fresh nutritious meal, or if you feel dehydrated, you might gravitate towards hydrating foods. Beyond hunger, sometimes we're drawn to a particular food because we're trying to feel a certain emotion. Sometimes we associate happy memories with specific foods, so if we're feeling stressed or in a bad mood we may find ourselves craving a food, not so much because we actually want that food, but because we think it will connect us to the feeling that we're chasing. Many of our memories are intimately tide to particular foods.

Social cultural and economic factors

These are things related to where you live, who you live with, your career, and the food culture around you. For example, your food history and cultural background. Our diets are significantly shaped by the foods and flavours that we are exposed to growing up. We also tend to have an emotional connection to certain foods that we grew up with that may lead us to seek them out. Whether you had to clean your plate before leaving the table, or if food was treated as a reward also helped shape your food history, and it may still influence your food choices today.

Another aspect of your food choices is budget. The amount of money that we have to spend on food will impact everything from where we shop, to what we put in our carts, and how we use what we purchase. Who you spend your time with also significantly influences your diet, we actually tend to pick up the food habits of those we spend time with. What we eat, how much we eat, and how quickly we eat, can shift when we're with others versus when we're alone. This is especially significant if you live with someone else, whether it's your partner, parents, children, roommates, or other family members. Their diets tend to influence your diet and vice versa.

Personal belief system, food relationship, and knowledge of food

As an example, let's talk about spiritual beliefs and values which can have a big impact on our diet. You might eat a particular way because you practise a certain religion, or maybe you feel strongly about protecting the planet and you limit packaged foods to reduce waste. There are many ways that your spiritual, religious, or ethical beliefs can affect the food you decide to include in your diet.

The last factor I'm going to mention, brings us back to primary food. Sometimes if we're not feeling fulfilled or nourished by the primary food aspects of our lives, think relationships, career, or finances, we have a tendency to turn to our diet or secondary food to provide what we're looking for. This may work in the short term but isn't likely to make us feel better in the long term because we aren't addressing the root cause of why we're feeling dissatisfied. It comes up often when we're talking about our food habits, so it's good to be aware now of course, that's not to say that every single one of our food choices has some deeper meaning telling us about the state of our primary food, but being curious can help you identify potential imbalances.

OK… that was a lot to cover but there are a lot of factors that affect our diet.

Some of these may be within your control and some may not be, but rather than trying to ignore or drastically change the factors that may drive some of your dietary choices, try being curious about your behaviours and preferences when it comes to food. This self-awareness and the intuition you cultivate by being curious and nonjudgmental about your diet is what helps you create a sustainable eating style that nourishes you inside and out. So many of us tend to be hard on ourselves when it comes to our dietary choices, but it's important to recognise that we usually have a good reason for those choices, whether it's because we're tired and we're looking for a quick source of energy or we've had a tough day and are looking to give ourselves a bit of comfort, both of these are perfectly good reasons to choose a particular food, and if anything, it's a sign we need to give ourselves a little more compassion. In fact, this is why conventional dieting approaches aren't effective, they try to get you to switch the foods you eat without getting to the root of why you might be choosing certain foods in the first place. Maybe stress is playing a role, maybe you're tired, or maybe you're seeking to fill some kind of emotional need. All valid reasons, but rather than addressing those larger needs, conventional dieting tells us to ignore them. We end up feeling that we aren't doing enough or that we don't have enough willpower, when research actually shows conventional dieting isn't sustainable or effective long-term anyway.

Point is, when it comes to secondary food you have to consider the big picture, to tune back into your body's intuition when it comes to food and understand how secondary food fits into the larger context of your life. Part of being able to do this is developing your sense of self-awareness so you can begin tuning into what feels nourishing and what doesn't. Rather than judging your food choices or someone else’s for that matter, simply be curious about the things that nourish you.