RESERVED AREA - THE 5 FUNDAMENTALS OF NUTRITION

In the past, food largely came from the local area. The production and distribution systems were local. You could find the same food both in the fields near your house and in the small grocery shop in the center of the village . It was the food that you had seen since you were little, and that had always populated your table. It was something extremely familiar, not only because it was what you had grown up with, but also because it was what you knew exactly all the steps to.

It was the wheat that you saw sown in the fields, harvested, ground in the mill and then, transformed into flour, become hot bread freshly baked in the morning at 5 with that smell that flooded the whole neighborhood, and that your mother made sure to take and give it to you find it on the table, with that cherry jam spread on top. They were those desserts that were always made with strawberries picked outside the house, which made the arrival of spring even sweeter, or those with walnuts and honey that you always found under the Christmas tree and made that moment of celebration unique. It was that wine that you already knew in part, having taken a nice bunch of ripe grapes from your neighbor's vineyard, and that you then saw pass onto the vats of the trailers, that wine with a sour taste, without the correction of the expert hand of a winemaker.

It was a food that never abandoned you, because it not only nourished you, but accompanied every moment of your working life, holidays and anniversaries of a local community.

It is no coincidence that it was the food you ate, it was what you found in your territory, the one whose production was in harmony with the environment, it was what gave you the energy necessary to live in your habitat and find harmony.

Today food comes from all over the world: bananas are consumed at the North Pole and Norwegian salmon in Africa, there is no longer a connection with the territory, there is no longer a connection between food and the environment, between the energy that food transmits and the physical needs of the individual in relation to his ecosystem. The direct connection is lost and there is an extremely rich table of elements, often profoundly disconnected from each other , disconnected from the territory in which they are produced and from the one in which they are consumed.

If before there was a direct and inevitable contact between food and needs (albeit with all the shortcomings linked to the lower economic development from which today we suffer in a different and reduced way) and this gave stability and continuity, today there is everything and this it does not help in the direction of nutritional balance, as well as disconnecting us from the local supply chains which are a guarantee of continuity and stability for all of us

Modern preservation and transport systems have favored the explosion of preserved foods . When such technologies were not available and only a few rudimentary preservation systems existed, the food was, for the most part, either fresh or spoiled and therefore inedible. The preservation times were those dictated by nature and known to all, after which it was no longer food for humans, at most its role became that of fattening some animals, with a stronger stomach than ours.

The foods were few and well defined, each with its own precise nutritional role and its own intact energetic value . Today the creation of a myriad of preserved foods
with the most diverse techniques, it allows you to have a great variety, but almost no truly fresh food.

Food, like human life, was linked to the seasons and to what it was possible to have in that specific place and with that specific climate. Foods were inevitably linked to the energy of the time and the relative climate, which required different foods from the body in different seasons. Each season had its discoveries and its gastronomic pleasures, which were often linked, as a whole, to local festivals and traditions . The first fruits were the ones that announced the arrival of a new season, with all that it entailed, preparing the body and the spirit for the change, it was the one that gave full awareness of the time that was passing, and of the fact that a new spring, a new summer had arrived. Seasonal food, matured naturally and with all the time it needed, tasted as it should.

Today we have strawberries in winter and oranges in summer, cabbage in August and courgettes at Christmas and many, especially among the younger ones, do not know what the natural season of each food is, they consume it all year round regardless. It is clear that the body needs different foods in January or July and that consuming the same food all year round at +40° or -5°, on the beach in the sun or in front of a lit fireplace, is at least anomalous.

Since the modern agri-food industry was underdeveloped, the food was essentially intact, was not manipulated except to a minimal extent and was consumed as nature creates. This had the great advantage of keeping the nutritional value intact and maximizing the contribution to our body, compared to the quantities of food consumed. Today we have, and consume, many foods that have been heavily manipulated for the purposes of conservation or presentation on the market in the best possible form, to compete on supermarket counters with competing foods, which often lose much of their nutritional value during the various processing steps. , becoming something different and greatly impoverished. Just think of the difference between a grain of wheat and double 0 white flour. Try putting a grain of wheat or flour in a wet cotton ball, like you did as children in science class. You will see the difference in what will happen. The grain becomes sprout, the flour becomes mould. The paradox is that by eating much more and also many unnecessary foods, you enjoy a lower nutritional intake and perhaps gain weight . The body receives many elements, perhaps often "useless" but not enough of the necessary and indispensable ones. Hence deficiencies, imbalances, anomalies and often "inexplicable" illnesses , because the things in the fridge are many, rich and well presented, but not substantially adequate.

Through nutrition, one can experience the deepest well-being, an organism
healthy and emotional stability. It's not just what you eat itself that matters but also the balance between foods, each carrying its own energy that divides them into yin and yang, two forces present in every food. This balance of opposing and complementary forces links human well-being directly to individual behavior, or rather to human conduct that respects the order of the universe and therefore the environment in which he lives. Yin and Yang have an energetic value, as we said they are two opposite and complementary forces. Yin is the force of expansion, going upwards and outwards. Yang is the force of contraction, which goes downward and inward. For example, cold is Yin, hot is Yang, dark is yin, light is yang, etc. Continuing with the examples, the following pairs of terms are yin/yang: empty/full, feminine/masculine, winter/summer, night/day, north/south, introversion/extroversion. To achieve and maintain overall well-being, we must
find a balance between yin and yang and, in nutrition, balance the intake of yin foods and yang foods, trying to reduce the intake of extreme ones, too yin or too yang.

There are no right or wrong foods, you just need to change your vision, observe nutrition from an energetic point of view and not just a chemical one . By discovering the energetic properties of foods it is easier to follow a healthy and balanced eating style, knowing how to choose the food based on the season and the physical state of the individual, mixing the foods in an optimal way depending on their energy which will then be the one our body will absorb. Not only is the choice of food and how I combine it with other foods essential, but also the cooking method used (which is another valuable tool for enhancing or mitigating the natural energy of the ingredients). Nutrition becomes knowledge of foods and of oneself, it is not just a dietary regime, but a real philosophy of life that goes well beyond considering foods according to their biochemical characteristics (proteins, fats, carbohydrates... or vitamins , minerals etc.).