Nutrition
When Chicken Reeks: Trust Your Body
Your body knows better than any plan. Learn to trust your senses again and recognize true food quality.
Nutrition
Your body knows better than any plan. Learn to trust your senses again and recognize true food quality.
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One of the biggest "dietary sins" is wanting to control everything with your head. Yet we keep saying this: A tiger doesn't need to have read a biochemistry textbook to eat right and stay healthy. The question is, how does it do it? Anyone with a dog knows: the animal smells the food. If it's appetizing, it gets eaten; if not, the dog looks confused and walks away. Sometimes you wish that modern humans would reconnect with a bit more of their inner dog.
Humans possess an incredible sensory capacity that has been finely tuned over millions of years of evolution. When something isn't good for us, the body typically knows it and shows aversion. In other words, the body of a normal person.
Sometimes we need to cultivate this again. These days we're so caught up in our heads that we no longer trust our sensory perception and intuition—our built-in body wisdom—and we simply override it. The underlying desire, of course, is control. Imagine a surfer trying to control surfing through thought, using his head. He'd probably fall off the board immediately. Training exists precisely so you develop a feel for the wave and for movement patterns.
We humans do it the opposite way: we come into the world with sensory capacity and have decades to train it. In most cases, it's well-trained, but we don't use it at all. That means: we "train" constantly, but when it's time to ride the wave, we switch our brain back on. Dietary plans are therefore worthless—they indirectly rob us of our feeling. Conceptualizing harms us. Concepts blind us and make us sick. And besides, you never arrive. It never ends. We're always chasing some problem, and when we've solved it, suddenly a new one appears.
First it's sugar we stop eating. Once we don't eat that, it's heavy metals. And when we've eliminated those, it's other environmental toxins. Then you don't want to eat meat anymore, but suddenly realize that veganism doesn't work at all and you have to supplement endlessly. Oh no! The goal behind our well-intentioned approach is a healthy state of balance in the body. When we achieve it, we will be—and stay—healthy. And for that we need our sensory perception, our senses, and our intuition.
Theoretical knowledge always needs to be brought into real-life context and lived experience. We can give you theoretical knowledge, but we can't give you a nutrition plan or lifestyle plan. How could we? For that, you need the dog inside you. Not an influencer or other advisor who isn't living your life.
Is poultry from factory farming healthy? No idea. Are there studies on this? Sure, there are. Is this relevant to my life? No idea. The fact is: if someone cooks chicken and it smells like a toilet after sitting in the fridge overnight, they shouldn't assume that food is healthy. When someone serves friends and family the best turkey meat from a farm and everyone experiences an incredible flavor sensation, they know what's up.
But of course, here too: you can fool yourself quite well. For that you might need a dose of metacognition after all ;-)
