adjusting your food preference

Most people realize that what you enjoy eating is partly a matter of
habit and likely what your parents served...but you can train yourself
to like healthy food if you don't already and wean yourself off of the
high cal, high fat foods. You do that by substituting some good food
for a "bad" food. At first you may not like the new food, but with
time, you learn to like it. When you consider the fact people eat
everything from burried fish heads to raw seal eyes to chiterlings and
monkey brains and rats...and love it, you realize just how much of
food preference is learned. One thing almost everyone does like is
sugar however. I remember reading about an early settler who offered
sugar to Indians. He said they would taste it and this smile would
come over their faces. Considering their stoic nature, that is saying
something. In fact, I have never met anyone who does not like sugar in
some form.

What I did a few years ago was to change my eating habits. I had to. I
was eating lots of high-fat, high sugar, high calorie food and almost
no vegetables. I made the change slowly to vegetarianism. The last
food I decided to adapt to was tomatoes. When they appeared over and
over as a healthy food, I decided I would take the plunge. At first, I
had to hold my nose...literally. Then it became more tolerable, and
finally, I actually love tomatoes.

Another thing occured in this transition to vegetarianism. Again it
was a slow process. I first went to just chicken and turkey, and
gradually substituted high protein non-meat foods for the meat and
then stopped eating it altogether. That was about 3 years ago. A
strange and unexpected thing occurred. I began to notice there was a
gamey, ROTTEN smell to meat. I sure never noticed it before, except
with wild game. The other day I smelled some meat that smelled very
good....then I realized what I was smelling wasn't the meat, but the
sauces it was cooked in. If you find yourself loading a hamburger with
condiments, it may be those that you are really liking too, especially
the salt. Plain cooked meat with no flavoring isn't probably all that
great, although I don't remember ever eating it plain. Hey, lots of
people who don't like tomatoes, love catsup like I used to. Even
though catsup is made from tomatoes, it's the salt and sugar they
crave. Your thoughts?dkw

Weaning yourself from processed grain and sugar filled foods to those
in their natural state (meat, veg, fruit) is the best thing anyone can
do. I was raised from childhood to love sugary starchy foods, but
over time I have learned how good fresh meat and produce can be if
prepared (or not prepared!) properly.

On Oct 31, 8:39 pm, Tom wrote:
Weaning yourself from processed grain and sugar filled foods to those
in their natural state (meat, veg, fruit) is the best thing anyone can
do. I was raised from childhood to love sugary starchy foods, but
over time I have learned how good fresh meat and produce can be if
prepared (or not prepared!) properly.

I agree. I like plain, simple food best though. A raw apple, not the
baked one with cinnimon and brown sugar, raw carrots, not carrots
cooked in butter, etc. While I love to watch some of those food
preparation shows, I keep thinking the food would have been better
before they did all that stuff to it. Of course a big part of food
preparation goes back to food preferences and also necessity. Before
refrigeration, people had to find ways to keep food from spoiling..or
to counter the taste of food that was already going bad. Now we don't
need to do this, but have grown accustomed to some degree to those
food operations. The French are experts. If you take almost anything
and roll it in sugar and cream and a few spices, then saute it in
butter, then sprinkle a little more sugar and cinnamon on top, it will
taste good to lots of people.

For dieters, the best diet book might be no book at all, since almost
anything you tend to do to food increases the calories and decreases
the nutrition. dkw