Fresh food outdoor market
I remember back in he old days, living at home with my mother as a 10 year old, when went to school at the morning, even if it was for a pre-class sport activity 6:15am, the city was buzzing already. The local fresh-food outdoor market was just blooming 3 times a week and the giant Sunday market was already open from like 5am every single weekend. If you wanted to do your shopping, you just went at any given time before work, made it home, had breakfast, then walked an hour to work and started your day. This farmer's market would be closed by 10am on weekdays, but the Sunday market wouldn't be staying longer than 12am either.
(About the farmers: at the old times the actual farmers came to these markets to sell their own produce. Of course at the very beginning, there was no need for licence or permit, you just came with your 15 carrots, two heads of lettuce, 10kg of apple and maybe a basket of cherries. You sold all of it and next day you came back with a completely new selection. Then somebody came up with the idea of limiting the number of producers or privileging some of them, so a legislation came into the picture. Obligatory permits plus emplacement rental! This already has changed many things, so people who could not afford paying it, like the mammy and pappy with their single chicken, pumpkin seeds and a kg of tomato would not come anymore. Then sanitary and quality control and all kind of non-necessary rules made real producer's life even harder. This is when mass import companies just grabbed half of the 'market-share' and started selling all kind of imported food, for half price or even less, to non-farmer resellers.
However these people are not hard workers, don't even know how to plant and protect a tomato. They don't want to wake up early, they don't want to install their stand every single day, they do not even want to take their food away for the next day's market and they cannot stay outside in rain and snow for hours. So heated and cooled facilities, security guards and sprayed food arisen. All apples and all tomatoes have the same look and the same taste. Food quality went down, opening hours are now for a fresh food market are like 7:30 to all day long, every single day, Sunday market opens at like 7 or even later and open till 14 or later. People don't even go there anymore, cause they find the same exact branded "fresh" foods like in all supermarkets. Unless you knew personally a producer of course)
Why was it just so good ?
- Fresh food for the population 3 times a week. Not more, not less.
- Exercise of walking and carrying heavy bags, as a morning routine regularly.
- Less used up space, fresher foods, more human contact, great living, less of a business
- Only seasonal quality foods. Winter time, some apple, squash, kale, pumpkins, some potato, some carrot, lot of nuts and seeds, beans and legumes, lot of meat. Summer time, fresher greens, fruits and veggies.
- Better farmers, better clients.
What happened in the supermarkets ?
The same exact thing. Instead of being open at 6am, it is now 8:30. Instead of closing at 12 to 14pm for recharging shop items and employee energy levels, it stays open till 20, 21 or 22 o'clock at the evening.
- When is the human mind the freshest ? At the morning.
- When would we have the most sane choices, thinking about the 3 meals coming up during that day ? At the morning !!!
- What is the only thing open 7 or 8am ? Bakery and coffee shops.
What will the lazy eat ?
- Coffee and croissant morning
- A triangle sandwich - orange juice combo, with a muffin for lunch and another cappuccino (as it is better than coffee, isn't it ? )
- Minced beef, with a sugar loaded conserved pre-cooked canned sauce and pasta with ground, poor quality Parmesan at the evening.
What would you buy at 6am if you had time, energy, knowledge and willpower to prepare ?
- 3 eggs, parsley, tomato and an avocado for a green omelette breakfast
- a head of lettuce, spinach, canned sardines, lemon, olives and a seed-mix for midday salad
- chicken breast, sweet potatoes, with a yogurt infused mushroom sauce at the evening.
As energy levels drop during the week, the orange juice will turn into coke, coke will turn into redbull, 2 coffee will be 4 espressos and the evening processed but prepared meal would be a pre-packed frozen microwaved TV-dinner.
After 1hour of training, 2 hours of commute and 10hours of work, I arrive home at 20:30 and in 15minutes I can prepare a fresh food meal. A thin turkey breast turns white in like 8minutes, an egg cooks in 8minutes, spinach, parsley, basil, get chopped while everything else is cooking. If you were a vegan, it is even easier, just to turn on the rice cooker and prepare yourself for the next day, shower and check your personal mails till the machine beeps.
Options for the occupied
Accept what you cannot change, use what is available to your advantage. Shopping once a week, god-forbid once a month is not an option. This will lead to bad health and processed food consumption most of the time.
What you cannot change is the opening hours of the shops. Unfortunately this is going to stay for a while. However what you can change is your shopping cart, your morning food-bag and your schedule. Instead of Saturday or Sunday shopping, get your food, from an AM pre-written list, Friday after work. Like this Saturday and Sunday you have real free time. This would be your major weekly shopping, with food items surely lasting till next Friday.
Non-preserved long lasting fresh foods, are your best kick at this. Do not think that you are smart, if you started cooking 20meals Sundays for the whole week, then freeze them. You must eat fresh for the best health, mental performance, productivity...
Certain fresh foods can stay in your fridge for a week or more, and will not go bad. Stays fresh, edible, tasty and healthy. You can use them cooked, raw, in salads or complete meals. You can even blend them together with fruit for a midday smoothie. (Butternut squash / banana / carrot smoothie with cinnamon - EPIC !!!)
- Red and green cabbage, sauerkraut
- Carrots, sweet potatoes, yams, potatoes, white carrots,
- Celery roots and sticks
- Bananas and plantain
- Tomatoes
- Pumpkins, courgette, cucumber
- Olives, avocados, olive oil
- Coconut oil, flax oil, butter, goose-fat
- Nuts and seeds, in the fridge too !
Meats after cut are okay for a day or two and have the best taste, texture and highest nutritional value. Anyways, don't think that you must eat animal products every day. I sometimes get a piece of liver every second week, with 1 egg 3 times a week and that is it. When melon and peach season was here, I had no animal products for 5-6weeks on end. Don't even think that eating in-season, local, ripe raw and organic fruit will compromise your fat burning ability. If you ate it with bacon, maybe would mess up your digestion and would cause health problems later on. It is just a question of food periodisation and knowledge about food combining.
As a vegan example, for non-vegans too:
As a vegan example, for non-vegans too:
- 6am: 3 avocados,with spinach and nuts, olive oil
- 2pm - 5 yellow melons, eaten with seeds
- 6pm big peach smoothie followed by a fresh salad
Food tastes good, but it has a function too. Health and energy. More is not always better and less is often as harmful. It has to be ideal and the secret word is enough. You must be eating enough, to maintain bodyweight, to maintain or elevate energy levels and to stay healthy all the time even in the most stressful circumstances.
When you did your Friday post-work shopping, you bought items for the week, and for the up and coming 3 days. The only thing what you gotta renew is your greens. Honestly, even after 1 day, your greens are a bit off. Get the freshest greens the most often possible. I also recommend that at least in your greens go certified organic. Get them two or three times a week if possible and eat a different green every single day. If you were an athlete and did some trail running, do a 10 minute research every day about wild edibles and during your 15 minute cool-down after each run, you can collect wild greens for your omelette. Do you still pay for tea ? Pine needles, stingy nettle and pepper mint are so easy to recognize, basically they are totally unmistakable. When I go for a recovery run, I always have a light expandable 18L pack on me. I can fill it up with herbs and mushrooms during my run. Save money, get better health and avoid shopping.
S(h)elf-control
To summarize our mind-digging here. Unfortunately shops never gonna open 6am, in France especially not. Fresh food markets are not that fresh anymore and very often instead of farmers we see sales men, using produce of a giant whole-sale distribution. Often organic brand's produce is made or controlled by giant agricultural enterprises, so we do not have to necessarily trust that either.
You could read my advices above about food items staying fresh longer and the greens loosing their vitality after just 1 day. I am recommending going to the ABC shop, supermarket, local veggie store, for one major weekly charge up and another time to reload your greens and maybe to get fresh meat, if you were really into that.
Most people complain: - I just cannot go more often, I don't have time. So they don't have time for 15minutes of strategic shopping with basically no extra time added, cause on nearly every corner in a city or at every auto route exit and fuel station there is a giant mall, but there is time for 3 hours of TV a day. If you went to bed before 21:30 every single night, you would be sleeping better, you would wake up a lot earlier, you could plan your day ahead, write down your tasks and complete your shopping list. It is not just about timing of supermarket openings, but timing of your life too.
I don't want to get into a conspiracy theory at all here, but when you check a supermarket, the fresh food part of fruits and veggies and the real non-processed butcher part takes up less than 5% of total surface area. The rest is crap and it is there to make your wallet empty. This is why, the real food isle is always in the middle of the shop. Regardless from which way you want to approach it, you must cross at least one, but most often 4to5 crap-isle. A little chocolate-bar here, a bottle of orange juice there, some jam, some processed tomato sauce and majo, then an orbit and an aspirin at the cashier and off you go. You came for butter, cucumbers, apples and potatoes costing like 7bucks and now your shopping cart costs 25. No wonder that at the end of the month you are surprised that food bills are up ! This is even more magnified if you went when hungry, tired, angry and if you emptied the house totally of food.
Get organized, stay in control, don't loose focus, don't let hunger and food control you, wake up from the Matrix and grab the steering wheel !
S(h)elf-control
To summarize our mind-digging here. Unfortunately shops never gonna open 6am, in France especially not. Fresh food markets are not that fresh anymore and very often instead of farmers we see sales men, using produce of a giant whole-sale distribution. Often organic brand's produce is made or controlled by giant agricultural enterprises, so we do not have to necessarily trust that either.
You could read my advices above about food items staying fresh longer and the greens loosing their vitality after just 1 day. I am recommending going to the ABC shop, supermarket, local veggie store, for one major weekly charge up and another time to reload your greens and maybe to get fresh meat, if you were really into that.
Most people complain: - I just cannot go more often, I don't have time. So they don't have time for 15minutes of strategic shopping with basically no extra time added, cause on nearly every corner in a city or at every auto route exit and fuel station there is a giant mall, but there is time for 3 hours of TV a day. If you went to bed before 21:30 every single night, you would be sleeping better, you would wake up a lot earlier, you could plan your day ahead, write down your tasks and complete your shopping list. It is not just about timing of supermarket openings, but timing of your life too.
I don't want to get into a conspiracy theory at all here, but when you check a supermarket, the fresh food part of fruits and veggies and the real non-processed butcher part takes up less than 5% of total surface area. The rest is crap and it is there to make your wallet empty. This is why, the real food isle is always in the middle of the shop. Regardless from which way you want to approach it, you must cross at least one, but most often 4to5 crap-isle. A little chocolate-bar here, a bottle of orange juice there, some jam, some processed tomato sauce and majo, then an orbit and an aspirin at the cashier and off you go. You came for butter, cucumbers, apples and potatoes costing like 7bucks and now your shopping cart costs 25. No wonder that at the end of the month you are surprised that food bills are up ! This is even more magnified if you went when hungry, tired, angry and if you emptied the house totally of food.
Get organized, stay in control, don't loose focus, don't let hunger and food control you, wake up from the Matrix and grab the steering wheel !