Written by Guest Writer,  Dr Caroline Leaf

You have probably heard that our global food system is deeply flawed. You’re are right. In fact , it’s probably worse than you imagine. Fortunately there’s hope. It is possible for us to vote with our forks for better practices that respect our health and the health of our planet.

To begin voting for a better way, we need to increase our knowledge about food and food practices. We need to improve our shopping and cooking skills. And, most importantly, we need to change our attitudes towards food, health, healing and nutrition. Once we have opened our minds to a new, healthy way of approaching food, and have started removing unhealthy foods and habits from our everyday lives, we will have entered a culinary world bursting with magnificient smells, tastes, sights, sounds and feelings that will bring joy to our mouths and stomachs.

My new book, ‘THINK AND EAT YOURSELF SMART – A Nueroscientific Approach to a Sharper Mind and healthier Life,’ which can be pre-ordered from your favourite bookseller or AMAZON is an attempt to reintroduce the culture of thinking and effort back into eating, one based on diligently stewarding the bodies, and world, that God has entrusted to us. In the spirit of renewing the mind, it is a lifestyle book that seeks to reimagine what we eat within an integrated spirit, mind and body framework (Romans 12:2; 1st Thessalonians 5:23).

Thinking, as you will see, plays a dominant role in eating. Toxic thoughts can negate the positive effects of good nutrition. Healthy thoughts can enhance the effects of good nutrition, and mitigate the effects of bad nutrition – to a degree. In fact, healthy thoughts lead to better food choices. Eating and thinking are so intertwined that what you are thinking  about before, during and after eating will impact every one of the 75-100 trillion cells in your body, including the cells of your digestive sytem. Your state of mind will have a negative or positive influence on your digestive health, and your digestive health will also have a negative or positive influence on your state of mind.

There is always someone new telling us that they have the solution to everyone’s dietary and or exercise habits, suggesting that if we don’t follow their advice we will surely drop dead. Even a lot of nutritional advice from so-called “experts” is often based on overblown correlations and inaccurate interpretations. And that is not even mentioning the $50 billion supplement industry. If I had to follow the advice of just one company, i worked out I would be taking up to 65 different tablets, three times a day!

The fact is that we are all unique, which means that a way of eating, exercising, and sleeping that works for you may not work for me, within a context of a healthy lifestyle and a diet of real, naturally produced foods. Rather than getting caught up whether you should go paleo, vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, plant-based, raw vegan or follow the blood type diet or even genetic typing (to mention just a few diets that are popular today), it would be much better to understand the fundamentals of eating, the completely entangled relationship between thinking and food, and how our uniqueness spreads throughout our spirit, soul and body.

Bon appetit!