Greetings, fellow Sophians.
A dear, wise friend sent me a copy of the recent New Yorker magazine article entitled, "Why Are Americans So Fat: XXXL".
The article cited various books and studies that suggest pieces to the puzzle that is (sort of) an answer to that question, including ancestral links and evolutionary links.
But the real theme that was playing out, perhaps building on the aforementioned, involved a troubling (though not surprising, for anyone who's actually been paying attention) connection between changes in corporate policies -- including 'super-sizing' and an increase in the use of 'eatertainment' food-categories that include highly addictive ingredients (fat, salt, sugar). And that didn't even include the ethically questionable subject of 'neuro-marketing'!
One of the more troubling references in the article to Brian Wansink's "Mindless Eating" (2006) and his work at Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab. Dr. Wansink's research showed that an alarming percentage of people have no concept at all of when they'd eaten enough, but rather relied "on external cues, like portion size, to tell them when to stop."
With super-sized portions, a large number of people just eat more. If, as Wansink's research showed, a bowl of soup automatically refilled itself, a lot of people would just keep eating. Kind of like Homer Simpson. Or someone under the sway of cultural-hypnosis.
This is yet another symptom or effect of a cultural dissociation from one's innate body wisdom - being 'out of one's body' and thus disconnected from its wisdom, barring a crisis that jolts one back into it. The Mystery and Wisdom adepts and teachers in times past would have called this 'archontic influence' - a deviant, fear-centered consciousness which leads us astray, away from our Divine gifts, wholeness, nature, and wellbeing.
The research shows just far outside of ourselves we've been lured, in service of the short-term bottom line of The Psychopath Corporation, and away from what is healthy or good, individually or collectively.
These times are about coming back home, back into our bodies, back to our innate Wisdom. As the 12th Century Abbess and Prophet Hildegarde of Bingen said, taking back our own voice and listening, so that we know, at the very least, when we're full, and that we've chosen to fill ourselves with something that actually nourishes us.
Blessings on the Way,
Jamie
* Photo is from the Sacramento Bee
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