Confessions: I May Be a Hipster

Recently I was sitting in a local coffee shop and overheard a conversation between a few folks enjoying a morning brew. Obviously they were unaware that I was the owner of the new trendy, hispter-y grocery store that opened up in town, otherwise the conversation may have been different. They talked for a long while about how people are feeding into these food trends like lemmings. They mocked the very idea that folks have so many “issues” with various foods; just take the whole gluten-free and organic crazes for instance. They ended their conversation with a devout commitment to never follow such ridiculous food trends and act like all those hipsters.  (as they sat sipping beverages in the coffee shop)

So this all begs to answer one very big question: does what you eat really matter?

Everyone knows the basics; if you don’t drink enough fluids, you become dehydrated and could die. If you don’t sleep enough; you usually get sick. But then what about the details like what you eat, what you drink, what is in the food or drink? I have often used the analogy of a race horse to get the idea across. A horse that is groomed during its entire life to win a Kentucky derby isn’t fed cheap feeds with lots of fillers. They are fed the best feeds, electrolytes, vitamins, good water and more. They are meticulously cared for their entire lives so that their bodies can function at their most optimal level and at the end of the day, they can win the race.

It sounds like an extreme analogy, but when you really look at it, what we put in our bodies predicts exactly what we get out. Today people are so used to feeling sick that it has just become the norm. Each day we cope with headaches, reflux, heart burn, joint pain and many more even more severe issues.  These pains and discomforts have just become part of life; it should not be this way.

The fuel that we fill our bodies predicts how we function. Our nutrition affects every aspect of our lives from the time we are born, to the day we die. We should not wait until we are so sick that we are out of options and finally begin to look at what is on our plates. If focusing on my nutrition and that of my families makes me a hipster, I guess I am.