Food is a strange phenomenon made by God. You eat too much you get stomach upset eat too little, you get malnutrition you eat the wrong foods you get fat to risking heart attacks. I love eating and when hungry I cause food carnage. My late grandfather lived to be a hundred and seven years old and earlier in the year he died, he had been cutting trees, strong as ever. Since his time had come he had to go. So I went into a recollection of his life to try and determine how come he lived to be that old and very strong. From all the factors I gathered he had lived in the worst time possible. Kenya was not yet an independent country and for black Kenyan men, it was horror due to torture and imprisonment by colonial rule. Yet my grand Dad lived to be that old. I concluded food factor.
See my grand dad's diet consisted of honey he used to be a bee keeper and harvested raw fresh honey which he used as cough syrup. Then he had reared not genetically modified chicken, but traditional chicken not genetically enhanced and they were not fed with factory feeds. The chickens used to be released to go and eat out in the fields. When such chickens were cooked, the meat would be tough but very sweet and nutritious. For the eggs my grandfather never really bothered to fry or boil them. That would save on oil. He would just break them into a cup and just take them raw. I tried that, and nearly got a nervous breakdown due to the slippery effect I felt on my tongue and throat. The other thing that used to baffle me on his diet was the variety. There were these wild greens he would have them mashed with ground corn/maize and potatoes.
A bite at the food would be one to crave for I found myself eating few spoonfuls and I was full. Then the milk and other indigenous foods, while I was craving for cereal and a loaf of bread he would prefer having arrow roots and sweet potatoes. Talking of milk, he used to have his milk curdled, not your typical factory enhanced yoghurt. But after milking the cows, some milk would be put separate in a traditional gourd and allowed to ferment then it would turn sour and ready for consumption. That made me realize no wonder he lived longer than a century not even as an invalid. I was amazed when I realized he was a hundred and seven he looked eighty not a hundred and seven. What baffled me was he never used to take any pills and his memory was as sharp as ever. He was a quiet man reserved, but firm he never seemed stressed plus he used always to say I am trusting Jesus Christ. His work at around hundred years involved cutting down trees with an axe for firewood for grand mom. He was forever active and fun to be around, tough is an understatement he was the toughest man I have ever seen. In fact I can confess I always thought if my father messed up he would be held up by the neck and disciplined even at age fifty seven.
Now I have been doing a lot of thinking all these foods we are taking these days could just be a disaster waiting to happen to our bodies. The food is as oily like a greased engine no wonder we are so “highly flammable” to diseases that even a common cold downs us. We are frying ourselves to death, with the French fries that it would be a miracle if anyone of us in the current twenty something generation hits eighty it will be only be by God's intervention. The now generation is in too much hurry to make money that we ignore the wellness of our bodies as a result we hurry ourselves to an early grave. Maybe the solution to our health wellness does not so much lie in pills and injections, for a person any age. Perhaps it lies in maintaining a good positive attitude and a good diet like fruits and indigenous vegetables and an active lifestyle.
