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Informational and training meetings are held in Madison WI on a regular basis. Please e-mail us for details. Learn how the Sunrider products and business opportunity have changed many lives for the better, and find out what Sunrider can bring to your life. Many of our group participants have been consuming and using these products for 10-15 years, and are very well-qualified to understand and share what they are all about.
Food and Motivation
For Sunriders, by Ann Cue, MA, MH
Sometimes, when we invite people to add the Sunrider herbal foods to their diets, or even to replace some of their negative food choices with something better, they begin to ask all-or-nothing questions, such as, “What else can I eat?” or “Is this all I should eat?” Or even worse, “What do YOU eat?” The presumption underlying such questions is that in order to benefit from regenerational food, they need to make extensive and immediate changes in diet. At such times it is helpful to review the many personal and social needs that we fill by the way we use food and the ways we eat it. I have summarized these needs in five basic categories. Three are personal; two are social in nature.
First, and most obviously, there is a basic need for survival, or to fulfill actual hunger. For this simple physical need, just about anything with caloric content “works.” Taste is not primary, but it factors in choosing, when choice is available. Actual nutrition may or may not be a factor.
Second, we use food to satisfy or cover up our emotional needs. I call this the “comfort” factor. It describes what we do when feeling depressed, or neglected, or unappreciated, or worthy for some reason of a self-endowed “reward.” Most of the time, taste is extremely important, but nutritional content probably not.
On the primary social level, we have traditions of eating that help us to bond with various groups. First, we eat to bond in any particular group setting, whether it be a family, church community, group of friends, business meeting, etc. We sit down together to make friends and associations, and we are bonded by eating together. We eat the same food, and that is a common denominator that helps us relate to each other. Often we spend a lot of time discussing the food we are eating, and other food experiences.
Sometimes these social events take on a larger meaning, which bonds us to a culture in a celebratory manner. I am referring to the traditions and celebrations that are associated with certain foods, everything from Birthday Cakes to Thanksgiving Turkey Dinners to food feasts associated with our ethnic heritage or our religious festivals. Eating these foods, usually in community context, reminds us who we are in a larger context. This is a cultural practice that is deeply satisfying.
Finally, there is the all-important need that we have for regeneration, replenishment, actual nourishing of our bodies. Food advertisers would like us to think that this is easily accomplished with their particular offering. Unfortunately, accurate education in this area is rare, and many have learned to accept poor returns for their efforts to eat “healthy.” As Sunrider educators, we can teach them accurately, and even supply the foods that will actually do the job.
But we are doing a great disservice to our prospects and customers if we imply that they need to discount, or even abandon, the other real-life needs that they are fulfilling when they take food into their bodies. I urge all of you to let balance and tolerance be your guiding principles; remember that building new habits takes time and education. We are grateful for the Sunrider foods that allow us to offer people a way to fill their need for good nutrition; we ask them to think about how other food choices may be affecting their health and well-being. Most important of all, we ask them to take responsibility for their own choices and their own health, both emotional and physical.