Make a Wise Investment | meQuilibrium

In the modern-day rat race, while striving to achieve financial success, or just plain trying to keep up with the darn Joneses (Who the heck are the Joneses anyway?), we have literally run ourselves ragged. We spend long hours at the office, eat fast food and junk food, or skip meals altogether. We also lack daily physical exercise, sunshine, and adequate sleep. All of these detrimental lifestyle behaviors are negatively affecting our health.

According to government statistics, we spend billions of our hard-earned bucks on diseases directly caused by a nutrient-deficient diet and unhealthy lifestyle. Obesity, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, depression, infertility, osteoporosis, and other illnesses are literally eating away the money we’ve worked so tediously to amass.

Our current lifestyle model doesn’t make sense. We are working ourselves into a state of physical and emotional sickness — for what? So we can have a better life after we retire? We cannot enjoy retirement if we can’t even get out of bed because our bodies have physically failed us; or, more appropriately, because we have failed our bodies.

Today’s skyrocketing rates of disease could possibly have been avoided had we been taught the fundamentals of food at an early age. As a child I was taught two plus two equals four over and over again until I got it. And, if I didn’t get it, I couldn’t move up to the next grade level. It was that simple. I would have been left behind or forced to attend summer school until those facts and figures were ingrained in my mind, and I could recite them backwards, forwards, and upside down.

I believe, had we been similarly taught about food choices and how they relate to the health and maintenance of the body, preventing or healing illness could be as easy for us as two plus two equals four. But, for some reason food theory and preparation aren’t on the agenda at most schools.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I remember sitting through mandatory home economics class in high school. It was there I learned how to make a sticky sweet cinnamon roll. The students were given store-bought dough and told to spread it flat on the table until it resembled a square Sicilian pizza crust. We were instructed to coat the raw dough with softened butter, ground cinnamon, and lots of sugar. Lastly, we rolled the dough into a log-shaped object and baked it at 350º F for 20 minutes. Voila…cinnamon roll!

That was the extent of my training in food preparation. And, it seems quite possible that everyone in the USA was given that very same home economics class and it could be the reason for our current health crisis! As impressionable youngsters, we were taught two great lessons: two plus two equals four and how to prepare sweet cinnamon rolls.
Wholesome, nutritious food should be at the core of our eating instincts, but it’s not. Somehow we’ve either lost touch with that basic knowledge or were never taught it in the first place. And, in our haste to make top dollars, or keep up with the rising cost of living, we’ve neglected this most primal instinct for ourselves and for our children.

I believe we need to take some of our time, energy and money, and invest in the best quality ingredients, prepare home cooked, delicious and nutritious meals, and improve our health and the health of our children.

(Excerpted from – Health is Wealth, Make a Delicious Investment in You!)