Invest energy in something with mindfulness

I came across this story sent by Om Swami which was just perfect for today! Why I say today, because I was lost in some thoughts for quite some time, and didn't realize that, about what I was thinking, had already happened without any consequence. Let's read the story now....

“I’ve come with great hope, O King!” the aghori said. “Can Your Majesty grant my wish?”
“Say what you seek,” the king replied. “I’ve plenty for charity.”
“Just this bowl I need filled.” The aghori extended his bowl.
“That’s all? Are you mocking the royalty? Just the alms bowl! I am offended.”

Bhadraghosha, the king, had a point for his philanthropy was as acclaimed as his opulence. He ruled a vast empire and for an ascetic smeared in ash to approach him for a mere bowl-full of alms was a waste of his time, at least in the king’s eyes.

“You speak right but in haste, Maharaj,” the aghori said. “No one has ever been able to fill this bowl to the brim. Maybe Your Majesty is different.”

The king clapped and summoned his treasurer and ordered him to fill the bowl with jewels.

“Not so soon, Maharaj,” the aghori said, “I will only hand over my bowl on one condition.”
“Say.”
“If Your Majesty is unable to fill it, thou shall abdicate thy throne for me.”
“And what if I succeed?”
“I shall shave my matted locks, become your slave and sing your glories for the rest of my life. Truth be told, I shall take you as my guru.”

The bowl was handed to the treasurer who filled it with jewels in no time.

“I don’t understand what the fuss was about,” Bhadraghosha said, “it’s already full.”
“See again, Maharaj,” the aghori said.

The bowl was empty. Another attempt was made to fill it, but just a few moments later, it was empty again. They tried filling it with grains, beans, gold, milk, water, silk, with every physical object they could get their hands on, even pebbles and stones, but all in vain. The king and the courtiers began to sweat. They could almost visualize the aghori’s ascension to the throne.

“Forgive me, O mysterious one!” the king said, falling at his feet, “Are you Shiva? Who are you?”
“I’m just a simple ascetic, Maharaj,” the aghori said raising the king, “you don’t belong at my feet but the throne.”
“Enlighten me, please. What’s so special about this bowl?”

“It is made from a human skull. No matter how much you put in, it’s never satiated beyond a few moments. It always wants more. Even when it’s full, it looks empty. This false appearance of emptiness is very dangerous, Maharaj. It makes men go around in circles till their last breath chasing one thing after another but this skull is never content. Millions of thoughts enter in it and yet it continues to maintain the illusion of emptiness.”

The ceaseless flow of thoughts and desires in our minds, the incessant trickle of feelings in our consciousness, spilling over our very beings is at the root of human restlessness and discontent. We fulfill one desire and before we can enjoy the fruits of it, more often than not, we feel impelled to work towards another. As long as a mind isn’t trained to be still, it can’t be content.

And, contentment isn’t always a feeling. Or, a lack of it doesn’t mean one is greedy. Sometimes, in fact mostly, discontentment is merely the brain yakking away like a little child who’s talking to himself, the kind who has just learned to form phrases and sentences, these are the thoughts in our skull. What is even more fascinating is how an unchecked thought continues to build up and takes up all the space in our consciousness like a tiny bubble rising from the bottom of a pond to its surface and as it continues its journey to the top, it keeps on growing. This bubble floats on the water for a wee bit and then it bursts.

The difference between a good and a great meditator isn’t just the stillness of the mind or superior one-pointed concentration, it is but mindfulness. That is, the art of not pay attention to your mind’s chatter. It’s a highly rewarding skill to master: to be able to ignore the thoughts in your brain. For, no matter how grave something may appear in the present moment, once the mind calms down, the same issue begins to feel less significant. What seemed like a life-and-death situation last night, can feel remarkably pointless, even funny, in the morning, particularly after a good night’s sleep and nutritious breakfast.

Ever seen a hen hatch its eggs? It sits on it for days. Several times during the day, it’ll come and sit on its eggs, giving them the warmth and protection. This gesture keeps the eggs alive and one day tiny chicks pop out. The hen falls in love with her chicks and is possessive about them. She gets attached to the eggs (now chicks) she once laid and protected. This is exactly what happens to any thought we don’t let go. At first, it’s inside us where we let it develop. One day, it takes a tangible form and we are forced to face it. If you sit on it, you keep it alive. And one day it hatches, and by this time one is so invested in this thought that it feels right to hold onto it, to chase it. That becomes the way of the mind then. A pessimist becomes a chronic worrier, an optimist overconfident. Passion becomes an obsession and obsession a disorder.

Mindfulness keeps the flow of thoughts in check. It makes you aware of what you are dwelling on. Best of all, it gives you the ability to shift your attention at will.

Human mind doesn’t know the nature of a thought. It doesn’t know whether it’s good or bad, right or wrong, fresh or stale. We give those labels based on our conditioning and understanding. If you don’t sit on a thought, it will never hatch. And if it doesn’t hatch, you have one less attachment, one thing less to worry about. There’s no wisdom in supplying an undesirable thought with food (of attention and deliberation) or to keep filling your skull (with thoughts). It’s a bowl that never fills.

Let go. Shift your attention. Invest your energies in something creative and meaningful.

Some key points from Dr Viktor Frankl

Continuing from my last post from Dr Viktor Frankl's book on 'Man's search for meaning', these are some key points:

1. A person finds meaning by striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

2. To overcome 'existential frustration', Dr Frankl calls attention to the gap between what one is and what one should become. Man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life.

3. He sees freedom and responsibility as two sides of the same coin.

4. To achieve personal meaning, one must transcend subjective pleasures by doing something that points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself, by giving himself to a cause to serve, or another person to love.

5. Dr Frankl himself chose to focus on his parents by staying in Vienna when he could have had safe passage to America.

6. Even when confronted by loss and sadness, Dr Frankl's optimism, his constant affirmation of and exuberance about life, led him to insist that hope and positive energy can turn challenges into triumphs.

7. Frankl emphasized on the importance of nourishing one's inner freedom, embracing the value of beauty in nature, art, poetry, and literature, and feeling love for family and friends. But other personal choices, activities, relationships, hobbies, and even simple pleasures can give meaning to life.

8. Why do some people find themselves feeling so empty? Frankl's wisdom here is worth emphasizing-- it is a question of the attitude one takes towards one's life's challenges and opportunities, both large and small.
A positive attitude enables a person to endure suffering and disappointment as well as enhance enjoyment and satisfaction.
A negative attitude intensifies pain and deepens disappointments; it undermines and diminishes pleasure, happiness, and satisfaction; it may even lead to depression or physical illness.

9. Subsequent research in psychoneuroimmunology has supported the ways in which positive emotions, expectations, and attitudes enhance our immune system. This research also reinforces Frankl's belief that one's approach to everything from life-threatening challenges to every day situations helps to shape the meaning of our lives.

10. The choices humans make should be active rather than passive. In making personal choices we affirm our autonomy. Frankl writes-- man is ultimately self determining. What he becomes-- within the limits of endowment and environment,-- he has made out of himself.

11. Persons facing difficult situations/choices may not fully appreciate how much their own attitude interferes with the decision they need to make or the action they need to take. Frankl offers readers who are searching for answers to life's dilemmas a critical mandate-- he does not tell people what to do, but why they must do it.

12. Frankl stimulated many therapists to look beyond patient's past or present problems to help them choose productive futures by making personal choices and taking responsibility for them. He argued that therapists should focus on the specific needs of individual patients, rather than extrapolate from abstract theories.

13. Despite a demanding schedule, Frankl also found time to take flying lessons and pursue his life long passion for mountain climbing. He joked that in contrast to Freud's and Adler's "depth psychology", which emphasizes delving into an individual's past and his or her unconscious instincts and desires, he practised "height psychology", which focuses on a person's future and his or her conscious decisions and actions.
His approach to psychotherapy stressed the importance of helping people to reach new heights of personal meaning through self-transcendence-- the application of positive effort, technique, acceptance of limitations, and wise decisions.

14. His goal was to provoke people into realizing that they could and should exercise their capacity for choice to achieve their goals. Writing about tragic optimism, he cautioned us that "the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best."

15. In conclusion, the meaning of our life is to help others to find the meaning of theirs.

Man's search for meaning

I read this book called "Man's search for meaning" by Dr Viktor Frankl recently, again, as I had read it a few years ago also. This is one book which I can read again and again, and still looks new! It is written in an autobiographical style by psychiatrist, Dr Viktor Frankl. He discusses many specific examples from his imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp in 1943, along with his professional knowledge to offer a method for discovering personal fulfillment and a sense of meaning in life.

This book helps us in providing perspective and techniques to use to find meaning in our lives. Dr Frankl tells the story of his and others' suffering in order to provide a first hand account of the thoughts and behaviors a person goes through when confronted with such misery. Below I have taken some excerpts from his book to substantiate what he means by this.

In the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, Dr Frankl watched and witnessed some of his comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on his decisions but not on conditions. He says, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand towards conditions. Man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable to an unexpected extent.

Some psychoanalysts say that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances.

Dr Frankl proposed logotherapy (logos means 'meaning' in life). Logotherapy regards responsibility as the essence of existence, meaning that a person needs to determine his or her own meaning of life by answering this question in terms of individual wants and needs. Essential concepts to Logotherapy are "hyper-intention" and "hyper-reflection." Hyper-intention is the idea that trying to force something will make it impossible to achieve, and hyper-reflection is the idea that too much focus on a particular thought or behavior will lead to unhealthy outcomes. Logotherapy bases its therapeutic technique on the notion of "paradoxical intention," which is a method of focusing on unwanted circumstances as a means of utilizing hyper-intention and hyper-reflection to produce one's actual objectives.

Through an examination of logotherapy, Dr Frankl contrasts its approach with traditional psychoanalysis and emphasizes it is the only form of therapy that can help people with their search for meaning. The meaning of life can be discovered in three ways. First, one can perform a deed. Second, one can experience something or encounter someone. Or thirdly, one can demonstrate a certain attitude toward suffering. Concepts of existential frustration, noogenic neuroses, and life's transitoriness are addressed in terms of their relative impact on a person's search for and perception of meaning.

His view on pan-determinism says that man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. Pan-determinism means the view of man which disregards his capacity to take a stand toward any conditions whatsoever. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant, or is capable of changing the world for the better if necessary. Freedom however is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon where positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

Tragic optimism demonstrates the defiant power of the human spirit. Meaning in life is available in spite of suffering, provided that the suffering is unavoidable. If the suffering is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause. Alternatively if one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude. The priority stays with creatively changing the situation that causes us to suffer. But the superiority goes to the "know-how to suffer", if need be. Empirical evidence has shown that those held in highest esteem by most of the people are neither the great artists, great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sports figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high.

A tragic optimism means that one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of the "tragic triad", as it is called in logotherapy. A triad consists of those aspects of human existence which may be circumscribed by : (1) pain, (2) guilt, and (3) death. How is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all that?

After all, "saying yes to life in spite of everything", presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life's negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation. "The best", however, is that which in Latin is called optimum. Tragic optimism best allows for --(1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action. It must be kept in mind, however, that optimism is not anything to be commanded or ordered. One cannot even force oneself to be optimistic indiscriminately, against all odds, against all hope.

It is a characteristic of our culture that one is commanded, and ordered to "be happy". But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to "be happy". Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically.As we see, a human being is not in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, through actualising the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.

This need for a reason is similar in another specifically human phenomenon-- laughter. If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh. Once an individual's search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capacity to cope with suffering.

One universal phenomenon in our industrialized societies is the feeling of meaningfulness resulting from a frustration of our existential needs. In oversimplification, it means that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning. Meaninglessness is not a sign of pathology, but proof of one's humanness. But although it is not caused by anything pathological, it may well cause a pathological reaction. Just consider the mass neurotic syndrome so pervasive in the younger generation-- there is empirical evidence that the 3 facets of this syndrome-- depression, aggression, addiction -- are due to what is called in logotherapy-- "the existential vacuum", a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness.

What is meaning? The logotherapist is concerned with the potential meaning inherent and dormant in all the single situations one has to face throughout his or her life. Meaning in plain words is becoming aware of what can be done about a given situation. And how does a human being go about finding meaning? As logotherapy teaches, there are 3 main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life:

(1) By creating a work or by doing some deed.

(2) By experiencing something or encountering someone (e.g., in love). Experiencing can be as valuable as achieving because it compensates for one -sided emphasis on the external world of achievement at the expense of the internal world of experience.

(3) Most important however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.

Logotherapy may help counteract certain unhealthy trends in today's culture, where the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading, so that "he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy".

Dr Frankl says--" Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now."

As a prisoner in concentration camp from September 1942, for 3 years, he was suddenly forced to assess whether his own life still had any meaning. His survival was a combined result of his will to live, his instinct for self-preservation, some generous acts of human decency, and shrewdness, and of course, blind luck. However, something more was needed to overcome the deprivations and degradation of the camp. Dr Frankl drew constantly upon uniquely human capacities such as inborn optimism, humour, psychological detachment, brief moments of solitude, inner freedom, and a steely resolve not to give up or commit suicide. He realized that, no matter what happened, he retained the freedom to choose how to respond to his suffering. He saw this not merely as an option but as his and every person's responsibility to choose "the way in which he bears his burden."

Excessive focus is no good for us

We keep talking about remaining 'focused' on whatever we are doing to achieve best results. We have been told that the ability to focus is an important driver of excellence. Focused techniques such as to-do lists, timetables, and calendar reminders all help people to stay on task. Few would argue with that, and even if they did, there is evidence to support the idea that resisting distraction and staying present have benefits. Yet as helpful as focus can be, there’s also a downside to focus as it is commonly viewed.

The problem is that excessive focus exhausts the focus circuits in our brain. It can drain our energy and make us lose self-control. This energy drain can also make us more impulsive and less helpful. As a result, decisions are poorly thought-out, and we become less collaborative.

So what do we do then? Focus or unfocus?

In keeping with recent research, both focus and unfocus are vital. The brain operates optimally when it toggles between focus and unfocus, allowing us to develop resilience, enhance creativity, and make better decisions too, according to Dr Srini Pillay,M.D.( May,2017). When we unfocus, we engage a brain circuit called the “default mode network.” Abbreviated as the DMN, we used to think of this circuit as the Do Mostly Nothing circuit because it only came on when we stopped focusing effortfully. Yet, when “at rest”, this circuit uses 20% of the body’s energy (compared to the comparatively small 5% that any effort will require).

The DMN needs this energy because it is doing anything but resting. Under the brain’s conscious radar, it activates old memories, goes back and forth between the past, present, and future, and recombines different ideas. Using this new and previously inaccessible data, we develop enhanced self-awareness and a sense of personal relevance. And we can imagine creative solutions or predict the future, thereby leading to better decision-making too. The DMN also helps us tune into other people’s thinking, thereby improving team understanding and cohesion.

There are many simple and effective ways to activate this circuit in the course of a day.

Using positive constructive daydreaming (PCD): PCD is a type of mind-wandering different from slipping into a daydream or guiltily rehashing worries. When we build it into our day deliberately, it can boost our creativity, strengthen our leadership ability, and also-re-energize the brain. To start PCD, we choose a low-key activity such as knitting, gardening or casual reading, then wander into the recesses of our mind. But unlike slipping into a daydream or guilty daydreaming, we might first imagine something playful and wishful—like running through the woods, or lying on a yacht. Then we swivel our attention from the external world to the internal space of our mind with this image in mind while still doing the low-key activity. PCD activates the DMN and helps in connecting ideas across our brain (to enhance innovation), and assists to pick up long-lost memories that are a vital part of our identity. In this state, our sense of “self” is enhanced that helps us to enhance our agility and manage change more effectively too.

Taking a nap: In addition to building in time for PCD, we can also consider authorized napping. Not all naps are the same. When our brain is in a slump, our clarity and creativity are compromised. After a 10-minute nap, studies show that we become much clearer and more alert. But if it’s a creative task we have in front of us, we will likely need a full 90 minutes for more complete brain refreshing. Our brain requires this longer time to make more associations, and dredge up ideas that are in the nooks and crannies of our memory network.

Pretending to be someone else: When we’re stuck in a creative process, unfocus may also come to the rescue when we embody and live out an entirely different personality. In 2016, educational psychologists, Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar found that people who try to solve creative problems are more successful if they behave like an eccentric poet than a rigid librarian. Given a test in which they have to come up with as many uses as possible for any object (e.g. a brick) those who behave like 'eccentric poets' have superior creative performance. This finding holds even if the same person takes on a different identity.

When in a creative deadlock, try this exercise of embodying a different identity. It will likely get us out of our own head, and allow us to think from another person’s perspective. For years, focus has been the venerated ability amongst all abilities. Since we spend 46.9% of our days with our minds wandering away from a task at hand, we crave the ability to keep it fixed and on task. Yet, if we built PCD, 10- and 90- minute naps, and 'eccentric poets' into our days, we would likely preserve focus for when we need it, and use it much more efficiently too. More importantly, unfocus will allow us to update information in the brain, giving us access to deeper parts of ourselves and enhancing our agility, creativity and decision-making too.

(Adapted from an article by Srini Pillay, M.D. who is an executive coach and CEO of NeuroBusiness Group) 

Positive parenting tips--Old and New

Whenever I meet my friends or other people, most of them being parents, invariably topic comes to parenting! And everyone has his fair share of advice for positive parenting. It seems as if we, modern time parents, have coined this term 'positive parenting' and what it includes. But wait! Reference to this is found in ancient Thirukkural text.

Thirukkural was written by Tiruvalluvar (a Tamil poet/writer) more than 5,000 yrs ago. It’s one of the ancient sciences on Human Behaviour, which has not changed in spite of modern education & technology!

Some golden thoughts of Thirukkural:

1. If your children lie to you often, it is because you over-react too harshly to their inappropriate behaviour.

2. If your children are not taught to confide in you about their mistakes, you’ve lost them.

3. If your children had poor self-esteem, it is because you advice them more than you encourage them.

4. If your children do not stand up for themselves, it is because from a young age you have disciplined them regularly in public.

5. If your children take things that do not belong to them, it is because when you buy them things, you don’t let them chose what they want.

6. If your children are cowardly, it is because you help them too quickly.

7. If your children do not respect other people’s feelings, it is because instead of speaking, you order & command them.

8. If your children are too quick to anger, it is because you give too much attention to misbehaviour & you give little attention to good behaviour.

9. If your children are excessively jealous, it is because you congratulate them only when they successfully complete something & not when they improve at something even if they don’t successfully complete it

10. If your children intentionally disturb you, it is because you are not physically affectionate enough.

11. If your children are openly defiant, it is because you openly threaten to do something but don’t follow through.

12. If your child is secretive, it is because they are sure that you would blow things out of proportion.

13. If your children back-answer to you, it is because they watch you do it to others & think its normal behaviour.

14. If your children don’t listen to you but listen to others, it is because you are too quick to jump to conclusions

15. If your children rebel it is because they know you care more about what others think than what is right

The importance of moderation in diet

For maintaining a good, resilient health, we need to eat healthily. One of the keys to sustaining improvements in the way we eat is the ability to practice moderation in our diets. As a society, we tend to take an 'all or nothing' approach to food; eating too much of something or trying to eliminate that food or category of foods all together. That tendency towards extremes becomes even more obvious when we look at what's happened to the food on the shelves of our local supermarkets. On the one hand, we've super sized everything, and on the other hand, we see claims like fat free and sugar free everywhere in the supermarket, and these claims attract us because they're absolute.

However, if we can master the skill of eating with moderation, then no single food needs to be forbidden. We can eat the foods we enjoy as long as we don't consume too much of them. How much we eat is a very important question. But how to regulate our appetite is very hard for most of us. We socialize to eat until we're full. That's not a natural thing. And it's not a universal thing.

In France when you're hungry you say, "I have hunger". And at the end of the meal you don't say "I'm full"; you say "I am no longer hungry". That's very different than being stuffed. The moment at which you're no longer hungry is many bites before the time when you're stuffed. And we ask our kids the wrong questions. We ask, "Are you full?" We should rather ask, "Are you satisfied?" or "Are you still hungry?"

So you see, there are cultural ways and manners that help us deal with quantity of food we eat. We have to look at things like the way we talk about food. Are people really looking for lots of calories when they eat? I think they're looking for lots of food experience, an intense satisfying food experience. If you look at the French, and many other cultures as well, they get more food experience with less food. And they do that partly by eating more slowly, eating socially, and eating better quality food. There is a trade off between quality and quantity.

 
In fact, one of the biggest contributors to the obesity epidemic throughout the world has been our tendency to consume enormous quantities of low quality food. This is not to suggest that the foods we eat need to be expensive, but we need to spend our food budget wisely on the foods that will support both good health and enjoyment. What about having less of the better food so that every bite is enjoyable? So let's focus on those first few bites-- smaller portions of better quality food. Many cultures actually have a rule that basically says stop eating before you're full. Japanese suggest to eat until you're 80% full, Chinese say eat until you're 75% full, and in the Ayurveda it says you should eat until you're two thirds full. Everything but a 100%, which is what most of us do.

Next time you're going to eat something, ask yourself a few questions about it. Will this food bring me pleasure or Am I eating is because it's a food I feel I'm allowed to eat? Eating food that doesn't bring you any pleasure is another form of taking in empty calories, because they're empty of enjoyment.

The very next question to ask about a food you're considering eating is this, "Is this food worthy of me?" And it means, will this food support me in achieving all of the things I want to achieve, including good health? If the answer to this question is yes, then the very next question is, "How much of this food do I really need to eat to feel satisfied, knowing that I can have it again tomorrow or later this week because I've mastered the art of moderation?"

Each day should include moderate amounts of food that bring us pleasure. Moderation allows us to enjoy our food, knowing that subtle variations won't be make us sick!

The curse of processed foods

One of the biggest problems with our diet today is that much of our food is refined, or highly processed. I call it the 'curse of processed foods'! Let me explain why?

A refined or highly processed food is one which lasts longer on the supermarket shelf because pests, like mold for example, are less attracted to foods that are low in nutrients. But the question is, if highly processed food is so low in nutrients that even the pests don't want to eat it, how healthy can it be for us?

In fact, the nutrient content of any given food is directly related to the spoil rate of that food. Foods that are very low in nutrients spoil much more slowly than foods that are rich in nutrients. One of the best predictors of a healthy diet is whether it is cooked by a human being or a large corporation. And the reason is that when we outsource our food preparation to big companies, they tend to cook in a certain way that isn't very healthy. They tend to use too much salt, fat, and sugar, all of which are problematic nutrients for our health, and they tend to use the cheapest possible raw ingredients.

Thinking about the nutrient density of the food is another conceptual way of making sensible food decisions. The nutrient density of a food can be thought of as the amount of nutritional value, including vitamins, minerals, and fiber, divided by the calories, or energy content, of that food. Foods that provide lots of calories with very little nutritional value are sometimes called energy dense foods, but their nutrient density is low. For example, a glass of soft drink is high in calories without providing much in the way of nutritional value. A bunch of fresh spinach, on the other hand, would be an example of a nutrient dense food because its nutritional value is relatively high compared to its caloric content.

When people talk about fast food being cheaper than fresh food, they're often referring to the fact that the cost per calorie of highly processed food is lower than that of fresh, whole food. This is often true because highly processed food is so high in calories that the cost per calorie is relatively low. But, if we instead look at the cost of food per unit of nutrient density, then buying fewer calories of higher nutrient density food is a much better use of our food budget.

In the midst of a serious epidemic of obesity, avoiding empty calories should be on the top of our list of priorities. One of the reasons why highly processed food is usually higher in calories is that in order to make these products sell, significant amounts of fat, sugar, and salt are added to make the nutrient-stripped foods taste good. Additives like colorants, artificial flavors, stabilizers, and other preservatives, are also added to enhance packaged products and increase their shelf lives.

The last thing we need to be aware of are highly processed foods that are sold as healthy foods. These are products that have synthetic nutrients added back to them after they've been refined, and this is usually done to make the product seem healthy to the nutrition aware consumer. It's important to remember that the most nutritious foods, like broccoli, don't come in packages which tell us how healthy they are. So we need to be 'beware' of the curse of the processed foods!