"Whole Foods"; and preparing food from scratch

[Jade]

You do bring up a good point, Zach, and it is true. But we can't ignore the fact that Carla, like many others, was having health problems that were aggravated by her diet. It's really important for people who have a sickly body complex to know that dedication to conscious eating habits can alleviate symptoms - I was very, very sickly before I changed my diet, and now I'm literally never sick. I guess that's why I'm so passionate about it.

The situation you present is a bit extreme, that one would become so ascetic with their food that they lose all pleasure in consuming it. I don't think that's even possible, really - hunger will make a sock taste good. Food is almost pure pleasure all the time. Now don't get me wrong, I know people use food and their intake levels to torture themselves, or have psychosomatic repulsions, but I think for the most part people enjoy the act of eating.

Our society is very spoiled with our food choices, we can almost literally eat anything we want whenever we want. It's really important to just be mostly conscious, and if Ra says somewhere that Carla should eat dessert, he also says that she should have the "fruit juice instead of the cookie" - a big bowl of berries could be an awesome dessert. But Carla had a "complex addiction" and needed sweets - and, again, as food gets more processed, it gets more additives like sweeteners that desensitize us to natural levels of sweetness in foods.

I think what you're doing is ideal, eating mostly whole foods but having treats. Of course asceticism and extreme control over the self and denial of pleasure is not the ideal. But respecting the body complex with real food is important. Advocating that one could eat whatever they want and still be healthy is fine, too, but for those who do not have naturally healthy body complexes, attention to diet can alleviate many symptoms.