In the modern era, there is this pressing need to consume things quickly. As technology continues to progress, our society promotes for things to go through our system faster than ever before. Along with this cultural shift, we have lost our connection with cooking, which is the fundamental thing that sustains our life. Instead of cooking for ourselves, we let someone else cook for us, and we end up buying into the system.

This culture of mass production, promotes instantaneous consumables that aren’t digestible. We don’t consider where this food comes from, so there is no relationship with what goes inside our bodies. We go as far as to think of cooking as a waste of time, but cooking is not some kind of deviation from what you are supposed to be doing. When you cook, you are doing something that is life giving. And that’s what we’ve lost. Without taking the time to ponder what makes us who we are, we lose our sense of what makes us significant. Our ability to make food for ourselves is vital to support our well-being.

I’ve explored this idea of bread. Prior to the birth of processed bread manufactured in factories, you had dough that would get left out, so wild yeast and bacteria from the air would get trapped for fermentation. That’s how bread would rise organically. This method allows the bacteria and yeast to break down gluten and release nutrients. The result of this is home-made bread (shown in the picture), from a sourdough starter.

Marketing campaigns for whole wheat, whole grain and gluten-free shaped people to think of it as “healthy,” when it turns out this type of bread is difficult to digest. The nutritional release never occurs in the modern bread making process, so nothing gets broken down for us to digest it. Rather than fermenting (which is a slow process taking 1–2 days), normal bread now takes 1–2 hours to rise. This is immediate compared to how it’s supposed to be done. And so, what you end up with, is something that looks like bread, tastes like bread, but is not really bread.

It’s time we turn our attention to making something from scratch and cook for ourselves. Starting with bread, putting my personal touch on food has given meaning to not only feeding myself, but to share it with others as well. Getting to know your food provides all the more value for your vitality. Let’s get back to eating real food again.