When I lived in Toronto, I lived near an amazing ramen place. They slow cooked their broth for 12 hours, hand made the noodles & served it with torched pork belly. At the same time, I started meditating & sticking with an intermittent fasting diet where I ate 1–2 meals a day in a short window. This gave me a mental clarity, sharpness & an awareness of my body that I never had before. I became very in tune with how my food was effecting my mental, physical & emotional state.
I noticed that each time after my weekly ramen, I would feel mentally a bit down for a few days. Less centered, less energetic & more negative for a few days before returning to normal. I decided to monitor how I felt after each ramen & noticed the same pattern. Having studied food technology, I knew how ramen was made. A lot of pork & chicken bones are boiled on a low heat for at least 8 hours together with onions & seasonings.
Could I be absorbing the stress hormones of the pigs? I thought about the conditions of the average factory farm pig. I knew growth hormones & antibiotics were used, so maybe that was part of the effect. Especially considering 95% of serotonin is produced in the gut. Could the copious antibiotics used in farmed animal meat be effecting my gut microbiome & in turn my mental health? Could the use of growth hormones in animal agriculture account for the increasing rate of early onset puberty? I also knew that stressed animals produce stress hormones. Maybe I was absorbing these hormones. Knowing that everything is made of energy, I started to think about food as energy.
From then on, I stopped eating ramen & became mainly plant based. It turns out, when animals are overly stressed their muscle glycogen can break down, discolouring the meat & making it more acidic & tasteless. In industry, it’s known as ‘Pale Soft Exudative’. Fear experienced during growth & slaughter significantly elevates stress hormones including adrenaline, cortisol & other steroids.
For optimal health we should also consider the quality of the energetic state of our food. Not just the macros & micros. Also the hormones, contaminants, pesticides & integrity of its molecular structure. I eat as much organic seasonal produce as possible, only use stable fats for cooking & grow my own celery & leak which I use as needed in green smoothies.