Paleo diets are all the rage so lets do a Paleo thought experiment.

Imagine you were a Paleolithic man or woman. It’s been a hard winter and your food supplies have been dwindled. Your young children are hungry, but spring has come late this year. Nothing is sprouting and the game hasn’t returned as it normally does.

The Search
You have been searching for food, but other than a few meager herbs, nothing can be found. You know that if you return home with nothing it will mean another day without eating.

Your youngest has been growing weaker. She’s been coughing and unable to rise from her mat. You know that if you don’t find more food soon she won’t make it.

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p style=”text-align:Left;”>Feel the fear, the frustration, and the confusion at your situation. Feel the deep hunger in your own belly, which hasn’t been properly fed in weeks. You feel an ache not only for yourself but for your family as well.

Lost
Now imagine as you return home you become lost. You have never been in this part of the valley before at first, you are scared, but then you come across a tree.

On the tree are strange objects you haven’t seen before. You take one down and it smells sweet. You are unsure what to do, but you figure you have nothing to lose. So, you take a bite. The taste of sugary sweetness fills your mouth.

The rich grainy texture is a little sour, but you can tell this is food. You rush to gather as much of this new fruit as you can, eating as you go.

With your arms full, you head back the direction you came. And with each step, you know you carry hope for your family. Your heart is filled with deep abiding gratitude.

The Salvation of Food
For centuries, food was a blessing. People sacrificed to harvest gods and performed sacred rituals, but for most of us, access to food is an afterthought. Living in a modernized western world our idea of hunger is mostly abstract.

Even hunger that occurs on a diet is very different from the hunger brought on by starvation. Because of this, we have lost our sense of the struggle to eat that our ancestors fought with.

Wars have been fought over the same salt and sugar we buy at the grocery store everyday. But it’s hard to access that reality, because of the relative bounty that we live in.

So for this post I thought I would share a Mindful Eating exercise that helps reconnect us with our gratitude

Eating With Gratitude
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Interested in the Paleo vs Veggie debate read this awesome article by Matt from No Meat Athlete – http://www.nomeatathlete.com/vegans-and-paleos/