I have only just discovered the discourses of Luigi Cornaro, ‘How to Live 100 Years, or Discourses on the Sober Life’, written some 450 years ago and yet so fresh and beautiful. The man was way ahead of his time! He describes the kind of life I would like to lead, healthy and simple and full of gentle pleasures. There are quite a few websites with this on – here is one –
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020105cornaro.html
This evocation of peace and happiness and contentment is like a balm on our frazzled modern consciousness. I have read it through several times and aim to read it again often. The thing that gets me is that he was writing at a time when nutrition as a science didn’t exist. There was a concept of what food was good for invalids, i.e. very simple digestible food, but that was about it. He had no idea that vitamins existed, and no nutritional software! His diet was pretty reasonable – meat, fish, vegetables, soup, egg (only the yolk) milk, panado - which I think is a bread and milk pudding, and wheatmeal as opposed to refined bread. He doesn’t mention fruit but he did drink what to us would seem like a lot of wine – I don’t know how strong it was back then! The then current way of thinking was that if food was good for the palate it was good for the stomach. He tested this idea on himself and realised that it was wrong. The reason being of course that even then, for a man of means, there were all sorts of refined foods very far from what was available in nature, which deluded the palate with flavour unconnected to good nutrition. Having changed his diet to a modest and simple regime he said that after many years he relished his simple food more than he would have done refined delicacies. So he effectively reversed the prevalent idea – feed the body and the palate will follow. So if you eat food which is good for the body eventually you will come to prefer that food to the unhealthy stuff. So – eventually - no cravings – it’s just a matter of sticking with it.
The man is an inspiration!
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3 comments:
What you say has definitely been true for me - my tastes have changed dramatically since I began CRON. If you'd told me a year ago that I would eat a giant kale salad for lunch and actually *love* it each and every day, I would have said you were nuts. And as weird as this may sound, I truly don't desire junk food anymore. I never would have dreamed such a thing could be possible.
R
These are the rewards of dedication! I am still refining and improving my diet - some way to go yet. If someone had told me a year ago I would be this light, yet with no sense at all of deprivation - rather the opposite, in fact - I wouldn't have believed it. The gains in health and well-being are enormous.
Hi Steph
Yes, Luigi Coronaro's treatise is very much worthwhile reading ("The Art of Living Long" and others.)
Cheers,
Arturo
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