Sweet: Discover the relationship between nature, diet, and the taste of food. Why, if you are sad, do you want chocolate, and other times your body screams for olives? From now on, everything you eat will have another meaning!
A balanced diet is a basis for an equally balanced physical, mental, and emotional state. And to achieve this, you have to avoid extremes. Some foods cause contraction and other expansion; just as in nature, there are all kinds of contractive or expansive phenomena.
Please don’t panic; it’s not about learning strange or complicated concepts. Everything is straightforward. Think of the face you make when you taste a lemon. The body continually seeks balance, so if we eat very expansive foods, we will crave the very contractive ones and vice versa.
Table of Contents
1. Why Does the Body Ask You for a Flavor
This is the way of eating that most prevails in our society: we go from end to end, from meat, sausage, or eggs (contractive) to cakes, buns, chocolate, or ice cream (expansive).
Nature follows its course thanks to the search for constant balance. Intuitively, the body strives to find a balance. This continuous effort weakens it since it entails permanent wear and tear, especially of the nervous system, which undermines the emotional system.
In other words, what you eat, although it may seem surprising, also affects your emotions! Salt is one of the most contractive foods: eggs, red meat, pork, sausages, caviar, and poultry. Fish and shellfish are also contractive, although to a lesser extent.
2. What Happens When You Eat Very Salty?
There are muscle and mental retention and tension effect. For this reason, the body quickly goes to look for sugar; that is, it asks for sweet foods. There are cultures on the planet with meat and sugar-based on their diet, which gives rise to a quite explosive character.
Sugar is a portion of costly food, causing a lack of concentration, weakening of willpower and mood, dispersion, relaxation, etc. That is why it would be well to eliminate not only sugar from the children’s diet but also products that, in one way or another, contain it, which are many more than we think.
Oh, and I mean all the sugars and sweeteners: white, brown, cane, refined, fructose, honey, saccharin, sorbitol, etc. An expansive food like sugar causes a lack of concentration. Tropical fruits are also expensive. Eating pineapple or mango in a hot part of the world is not the same as having it in Barcelona in winter.
The second case will expand the tissues that do not suit us because when it is cold, the tissues have to contract to maintain internal heat. Also, produce an expansive effect the milk (butter, soft cheeses, yoghurts, some creams, ice cream, etc.) extended as white flour products, canned foods, frozen commercial soft drinks, and any product chemical additives (colourants, flavourings, etc.).
Suppose you eat a hamburger, a contractive food that produces tension in the tissues. In that case, the body will immediately need food from the opposite extreme, wildly expansive, to restore its balance, such as ice cream or a sweet dessert (something with sugar).
3. This is How the Sweet-salty Balance is Regulated
The problem is that when you eat this way, you don’t feel like focused foods, and those foods are precisely the ones that contribute the most to your well-being and those that should be part of your diet to a greater extent.
The most balanced foods are whole grains, which include whole grains, legumes, and seeds. Vegetables, fruits, and algae, fish are also balanced. If we add a series of condiments and drinks to this, we have enough ingredients to prepare a rich, varied, tasty, energetic, and very healthy diet!
“Focused” foods are those that compensate for the balance of flavours. Grains are essential, as evidenced by the fact that they have been very present in all cultures; indeed, they have been the basis of the diet of great civilizations.
They are also important because any grain, no matter how insignificant it may seem, carries within it the potential to germinate and create a new plant; it is life potential and, therefore, potent energy. Among the grains are whole grains, such as brown rice and other rice, millet, barley, oats, rye, buckwheat, corn, amaranth, quinoa, etc.
4. Your Essential Foods
On the other hand, we have those derived from grains, such as pasta, couscous, bulgur, etc. You may not know some of these grains since our culture has focused on only a few (rice and wheat, mostly), but today they are straightforward to find, and there are many ways to cook them to make your consumption healthy also attractive.
Legumes are also grains. Among them are peas, soybeans, beans (white, red, etc.), lentils, chickpeas, beans, and azuki, mainly. They have many varieties, as well as derived foods, like cereals. Legumes are a fantastic source of quality and essential proteins, so they help us regenerate the substance of the organs and tissues.
Giving more prominence to legumes and seeds will enrich your diet. Also, within the grains are the seeds, such as sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, flax, chia, etc., rich in vital fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. Grains should be the basis of our diet.
Moreover, they should constitute around 50% of our daily diet, since their consumption provides us with the essential nutrients for good health. Oh, and just in case, the myth that whole grains are fattening is not valid.
Now you know, what you eat produces some effects on your body, that if they are extreme, they must be compensated so that you feel good, in balance, that is why sometimes you feel like sweet, and sometimes salty. Everything has meaning! If you try to eat in a balanced way, your body will suffer less wear and tear, and your health and energy level will thank you.
