Something that I think is an important part of neo-Heathenism is getting back to whole foods and holistic living. Think you can be a tru Heathen and live on fast food, microwave dinners and weird chemical substitutes? Well yeah, you can, but you’d be selling yourself way short.
To me Heathenism is about holism. Recognising the way that – according to wyrd – what goes around comes around. And following on from that – you are what you eat. I would contend that a lot of modern food is a load of nothing, a falsely isolate confidence trick.
Take, for example, the humble canola margarine tub. Promulgated as part of the terror-filled flight from butterfat. Of course, if I understand correctly canola is extremely bad for you – almost certainly a lot worse than butterfat (which is itself much maligned).
A product of the industrial production line, canola oil-based margarine is literally nothing. It has no place in the natural order, at least, no place that makes sense outside of the complex abstractions of industrialised modernity.
Created to exploit our modern terror of food that has in fact served our species just fine for thousands of years, margarine and its ilk in turn seem monotonically related to the incredible rise in so-called lifestyle diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes and all the rest.
The latest fashion for margarine marketing here in Australia is to simply label the plastic tub “spreadable” without calling it margarine. As though we are supposed to write “spreadable” on our shopping lists where once we wrote “butter”. A product defined by its use, not its substance or properties. Literally nothing.
Now I’m no expert on nutrition, though I reckon Weston A. Price has a lot more sense than Kraft in these matters. But I do know that there is something terribly nihilistic about inventing new foods – which are terribly unhealthy – in order to ‘save’ the population from perfectly acceptable diets.
I’m talking about processed white bread, I’m talking about pesticide-soaked vegetables, I’m talking about all the nasty unfermented soy that the health conscious but ill-informed suck down happily.
These are not foods that you can grow with your own two hands. Yet nothing is more Heathen than what you can make with your own two hands.
Why did we go sour on traditional eating habits? A lot of it is to do with industrialised farming – which is of course the arch-lord of fragmentary rather than holistic life philosophy.
Apart from farming practices which strip the soil of fertility while doing nothing to restore it, industrialised farming also involves the application of all kinds of chemicals which destroy the environment and which end up in our bodies, taxing our systems an breeding disease.
In short – no consideration of the fact that what goes around comes around. Similarly, a lot of the food made with these methods is weak, vitamin-poor, tasteless, deformed. Bananas should not be able to keep fresh for a month at room temperature. Nor should they be bland, pale, seedless or as big as my foreleg.
These foods are gradually becoming embodied nothing, physical contradictions, floating in a putative non-space where we think we can pollute, destroy, and consume rubbish endlessly without consequence. The marvels of modern food are a whole philosophy of life, a philosophy of arrogance, mediocrity, greed (for those that profit) and ignorance (for the endless ‘consumers’ out there).
Heathenism has to have substance if it is going to be ever a serious proposition. In fact food and everyday holistic living is the most important legacy of the arch-Heathens. Certainly more important than gods, runes or dead languages. These folk lived with a sense of hands-on perspective. Pumping life poured through their veins.
Where does that leave us today? When you start researching alternative nutrition and realise how ubiquitous and unhealthy hydrogenated fats, canola, sugar-substitutes and high fructose corn syrup are – well, its just overwhelming.
Add to this the expense of organic grocery shopping. Why is organic food pricey? Cause you are actually buying something, not nothing. You are buying food grown the hard way, food with character, richness, luscious taste and lots of vitamins.
Why do kids hate to eat vegetables? Cause they taste gross. But feed them organic vegetables, free of GM and pesticides, and I bet you they won’t be able to resist.
I have a long way to go with rearranging my life in accordance with these principles; at the moment things are not very conducive to a lot of the changes I want to make or that in the past I have made but then was forced to relinquish.
But the way forward seems to me to be simple – once you’ve done your research you can start to gradually varying things. Just start in one area and slowly you can make the change. It’s the same with living in a more environmentally-friendly way: start small and work your way up. Even small changes can have big consequences.
Some easy changes you can make – stop eating vegetable oils (extra-virgin olive oil is much better); buy less processed bread (you get less slices but a lot more weight so it works out nicely); and pick up even the odd bit of organic produce – it is so good that you’ll soon be very motivated to either grow your own (which can be deeply satisfying) or else happy to rearrange your finances in order to go organic.
Dump on all those super-sugary foods like breakfast cereals that present themselves as health foods. Don’t read the marketing, read the ingredients list. The less of this rubbish we eat, the less of it we’ll crave. You can bet that Odin doesn’t have any fillings.
And don’t even get me started on the pasteurised milk fiasco. Back in the 1930’s they started packing cows into tiny, unsanitary living conditions. Then, to save money, they started feeding cows grain, which the poor beasts just cannot digest.
Result? Sick cows, which led to sick humans. Solution? Not to stop these bad animal husbandry practices but rather to process the milk in such a way that a vast proportion of its nutritional value is destroyed.
No Heathen culture would be so myopic, but here in modernity? This disastrous Government regulation makes it almost impossible to exercise your free choice to drink raw milk, even if grown in healthy conditions.
Well I’ve had raw milk and it’s just incredible. So powerful and rich. It makes you feel like a million dollars. I struggle to drink pasteurised milk anymore. You suddenly realise how unhealthy the stuff is, how inert and dead and foul, once you’ve had the real thing.
Well maybe postmodern industrial culture is like pasteurised milk – only satisfying if you’ve never drunk from the rich fountain of raw, living Heathen spirit.
It can take years to slough off the poison of postmodern culture (which doesn’t mean abandoning technology but rather treating it with the circumspection due to all things which seem self-evidently good). So start with just a little step, a little nibble, and be gentle on yourself.
The more you re-integrate yourself into natural living the easier it will be to keep going on down the path. You might just find yourself giving up the substitute diet of modernity and starting to eat the organic whole food of Heathenism.
The beating heart of old Heathen culture was frith – bountiful peace. Sounds better than waging war on my own immune system with poison dressed up as nourishment.
Some helpful sites to start you off (and Hex Magazine has lots of great stuff too):
http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/
http://www.westonaprice.org/
Such a ‘simple’ topic, but so fundamental & overarching. I’m myself a member of an organic food collective, where I can buy organic food from farmers ‘within cooee’, as Australians say. However, I’m also a ‘big city boy’ & have a hard time from omiting fast food & all that rubbish etc. In Germany there have been so-called ‘Reformbewegungen’ (reform movements) since the industrialisation began. But the real revolutionary strategies seem to be bio-regionalism, retribalisation, community-based living, and even autarchy. I have a long way to go with rearranging my life in accordance with these principles, too, as everybody has, I guess. Because the essence of POMO capitalist culture is fragmentation & the atomised individual. Politicians often speak of THE CONSUMER – this is who you are for them, so keep consuming & don’t ask annoying questions!
I’m not a vegetarian, but another topic that seems important in that context is what animals kept in mass stocks symbolise & what they actually do to the animals (and the negative effects this has on world sustenance etc.). The sheer cruelty! I’ve seen a documentary on animal slaughter in factory farming. KZ for animals! But hey, what counts for THE CONSUMER is the steak on the table. Just look at the new flu virus spreading in Mexico now that comes from swines! All this has to do with how we live & what we do. The very priciple you are talking about: what goes around comes around. Humanity, we have to awake!
Thanks for dealing with this issue, Heimlich.
Timely advice indeed for city dwellers! I start to wonder what types of cooking oils that restaurants in Australia are using as I eat out too often. Studies are done in China and Taiwan about the mutagenicity or carcinogenicity of vegetable cooking oils – apparently there is a high incidence of lung cancer among Chinese women who prepare food daily in kitchen and breathe in the fumes from those cooking oils, and bladder cancer among cooks who work in Chinese restaurants. The journal Food and Chemical Toxicology is full of thought-provoking scientific data about the relation between food and death. Eating therefore must go together with wisdom, otherwise one eats only to die sooner!
The truly sad notion of all this can be seen clearly in agricultural communities such as the one I live in. I’m in the heart of the Midwest, surrounded by rolling fields of corn and beans, and dwindling grass fed Cow fields. You would think that makes good organic food easier to get your hands on. Think again. I know one farmer in the area quite well, and he does all his own butchering for his meat market (The best damn steaks …period!). He just gained five contracts with different restaurants in New York City. They want good traditional raised beef. The restaurants told him these steaks are sold at 5 times the price of the industrial farm versions. Wow! Shouldn’t this be the other way around?
A great read as always, Heimlich!
It is my first opportunity to comment here on Elha Ablaze, and I was interested to read your perspective on the food industry in Australia. It cannot be denied, we as a nation are overweight and ill informed, and yet the sun tanned, fit, healthy (?) surfer image still remains a recognisable image of Australia for the rest of the world. (Next to the Golden Arches – I bet I dont even need to explain that one). I found your comment on the ‘soy’ industry particularly enthralling mainly because I have worked in a coffee shop and cannot help but laugh as lean, nutrionless rich bastards ordered their ‘soy latte’ and read articles in Cosmopolitan magazine or some such rubbish with actual titles such as ’50 reasons to drink soy’ – most of them advocating how COOL it is to drink soy as opposed to actually giving any concrete facts about the substance. The other issue that surrounds the growing of your own foods is housing, and city dwellers in tiny, cramped ‘studio apartments’ (another name for shoebox) will agree. I would like to mention that there is no excuse for at least growing your own herbs, and then seeking out organic produce. My parents live in Tasmania and have their own vegetable patches. Their neighbours do the same, and any extras unable to be eaten are simply taken around to your neighbour who may swap some of your apples for their carrots. Interestingly, my parents often comment on the overabundance of foods, and due to this fact, many homes have a small stall on the side of their properties with extra produce available for the taking – for FREE. Does anyone want to move? Regards, Virginia.
As you said there are many examples similar to margarine. One of the ones I find most disturbing is the case of ‘Analog Cheese’.
When I first encountered the refrence to this product as Analog, I thought it to be a mockery by organic lovers like me. Turns out its actually the real name of the product…
Here is a definition by some company who actually makes this stuff-
“Analog cheese is the broader category of substitute, imitation, alternative or processed cheese products made with dairy or non dairy proteins and alternative oils or dairy fat in place of milk solids.”
How shameless can they be? :-)
They continue to say that
“Examples are blends of natural cheese, analog cheese, zero cholesterol, low sodium, increased or decreased protein and lactose free. We can also alter melt points, shred ability, taste and color.
Another key advantage is reducing cost and giving price stability. Improved shelf life, chew, stretch and body can also be built into the product. To date we have over 200 operating formulas that have been designed to meet our customer’s needs.”
Thier motto is “We save dollars and solve problems. What can we do for you?”
Oh the chills it gives me!
Anyway, my parents prefer to eat that stuff instead of more traditional actaully cheese- cheese(*sigh* goat cheese…).
They say its less fatening and has less cholesterol. No matter what I say, I cant get them to eat Real cheese, which may be fat, but atleast has some nutrition in it.
Can someone explain me about the ‘Golden Arches’ thingie from Virginia’s reply?
Amazing!
I try really hard to convince fitness people of the logic of this approach all the time, and all I get are arguments. Heimlich presents the same philosophy to a bunch of Heathens and we get resounding agreement right off the bat. I wonder what that says about the intuitive intelligence of Heathens / Neo-Pagans compared to Californian gym-bunnies?
P.S. Golden Arches = MacDonald’s, but I’m not sure why that would be considered a recognizable image of Australia.
This post is excellent, as always.
I am overweight although I am 120 lbs lighter than I was 5 years ago. I will never be thin, but I do believe “crap in, crap out” is a pretty good rule of thumb. Gardening is a very Vanic thing (and something I should talk about more on my blog, yes) and is particularly useful now in the light of bad economy raising food prices, plus if agribiz didn’t already have serious problems now we’ve got “Frankenfood” (genetically modified food) to worry about.
If you like raw milk, try goat’s milk. OM NOM NOM.
-Siggy
Wow! I had no idea that this subject would provoke so many comments. Thank you all; its great to see I’m not a lone voice in the wilderness.
As I write I confess I am eating chocolate given to me slightly in advance of my birthday. I hate chocolate. Of the classic ‘lifestyle’ addictions, I managed to quit cigarettes (one of the hardest achievements of my life, quite frankly); never had trouble with alcochol; and can take or leave coffee easily.
But chocolate? Damn, the stuff is evil. If I’m not around it I wont be tempted… but if people put it in my path then I turn into a ravening beast.
Hey! Maybe curing myself of this crappy problem could be my next little rune-magic-for-self-improvement project!
When I was a kid I had a nasty weight problem and I still have to be careful (even though people like pointing out that I’m thin now). I reckon if I lived in a properly DIY, organic lifestyle I wouldn’t have to struggle with this at all, though.
I guess that is the brilliant apothesosis of industrialised food – in modern Western culture you can be obese AND malnourished at the same time. I think that’s a pretty amazing achievement. So much for the inevitable march of progress…
H
Well it is such an important subject.
Food has so much influence over us. It affects our moods, health and well- everything really.
I was vegeterian most of my life, and at the age of twenty I started eating meat. Now I’m very sensitive to emotional energy, and after eating meat for the first few times, I felt as if I was a caged animal with no will to live.
And thats what people build themselves on. But hey!
Its good for the goverement which wants lifeless drones with no will power as its citizens.
And not to mention sugar crazed children…
Brrr
Golden Arches = McDonalds
I am not saying that McDonalds is a recognisable image of Australia…I was being narky..however, to leave some information on McDonalds might make clear my remark which was satirical in nature.
My flatmate’s 7 year old doesnt know the words to Walzing Matilda, but can sing the Mcdonalds song and knows the current ad by heart.
‘In 1971 McDonald’s Australia opened its first restaurant at Yagoona in Sydney. Today there are over 760 McDonald’s restaurants across Australia serving approximately 1.45 million customers daily.’
Now to the fun bit!!!!
‘Our success is built on a foundation of personal and professional integrity. Hundreds of millions of people around the world trust the McDonald’s brand and we earn that trust every day by serving quality food that is safe to eat, respecting our customers and employees, and delivering outstanding quality, service, cleanliness and value (QSC&V).
We are a franchise business with more than two thirds of all restaurants owned and operated by small business men and women and we employ 75,000 people across Australia.’