Food as Medicine

I have recently gotten into cooking. And by recent, I mean VERY recent. I have always been spoiled to have people close to me enjoy cooking, and, well, in return I was also able to thrive in that enjoyment. However, my brother, who is usually that person in my life, has been gone for the past month. I've started missing creating better meals at home than when you eat out. Also, the fact that I was extremely dehydrated a couple weeks back because I was eating out so much. There is SO much sodium in everything.

I am a vegetarian so for the most part people assume that I am eating healthy. I try to. However, eating healthy does not equate to eating out for most of your meals. Even if they are salads or foods that are lacking the obvious bad "carbs" and "sugars". I have come to the age where I want to know what is going in my food. I want to read the ingredients on things I buy and I want to be able to know exactly what is in the meal I am getting. I know, it all sounds so obnoxious, I'm not one of those people yelling, "IS THIS ORGANIC" or anything. But when I am grocery shopping, you better believe I am double checking those ingredient lists! However, in order to just save the hassle, I have realized that, logically, cooking everything is my best option. I don't have to wonder what's going in my body because I made it.

In my last year of school I took a course called, "Humans and Animals" as most anthropology courses go, you assume it's going to go beyond the obvious, and depending on the professor, the course obective can go in any direction. My professor was a goddess. That woman was so well educated in food and human/animal relations it even furthered my food knowledge, the very knowledge that made me go vegetarian in the first place. She went into produce and dairy as well, she basically covered all aspects of what we put into our bodies. She even brought in an organic egg straight from the farm and an egg from the grocery store for us to try and taste the difference of the two. She was passionate and serious about educating us. From that point on, I've realized how much more cautious I've been with the things that I put into my body.

I've always loved and agreed with the idea of food as medicine. If you feed and fuel your body right, it will give you amazing results. This is beyond weight concerns, this is strictly health related and how one feels. I'm writing this after making a power meal. That made me feel inspired to share my fresh outlook on these things. Food as medicine. Simple as that.