I spend much of my time in China thinking about food. Chinese food, cooking food, eating food; food is a big deal. Mostly because, when food goes wrong, my life stops functioning here.
I have recently discovered cooking. Now, most of you are thinking, "Wow, it took her twenty years to realize cooking existed." Haha. No. I mean, I have discovered how to actually cook and feed myself.
It all goes back to June 2010, on my Italy EU Governance program, when I lost ten pounds in three weeks. Now, before you go asking me what my secret was, or congratulating me on the weight loss, let me just explain something quickly. I had a little revelation in Italy: if you train for a half-marathon and spend 80% of your time walking, while consuming roughly 900 calories daily, you drop weight like it's not even funny. For the record, I was literally starving myself, and not at all intentionally. I was just failing to get enough food into my body, and I was too excited by all the Italian sites and the intriguing EU lectures to care even remotely about food.
My mother made me promise not to repeat the Italy experience in China. I told her I would do my best to make sure I wasn't averaging negative calorie consumption every day. She didn't love that, but I figured that was a promise I could keep.
Well, I got to Shanghai, and guess what. The Italy trip came back to haunt me. I was eating 900 calories again, and I was sitting listlessly at my desk, no energy. One day, after five cups of coffee, I realized that this was not going to work long term. I had to learn how to feed myself.
Why was I consuming so little calories? Simple. I kept getting sick. I get a food poisoning based disease once a month in China. I throw up for a couple days. I don't eat. My metabolism slows to a crawl and it takes me at least a week to eat like a normal human being again. I figured out that most of this food poisoning was coming from the restaurant food I relied on. So, I stopped eating restaurant food. For me, this basically meant not eating. Not eating is not healthy; it doesn't take a bachelor's degree to know that. So, I did the only thing I could do: I started figuring out how to cook.
It's funny how getting food into one's body can become so complicated in a foreign country. For example, in America, I can bite into an apple, no problem. Sometimes, you can even do this *GASP* without washing it first. Scandalous! Well, try that in China, and you'll be throwing up for a week.
Here are the rules I must follow in China for cooking, or I am one sick puppy:
1. All vegetables and fruits must be washed and peeled. This means fruits like peaches, which don't stand up well to peeling, are a no-no. Oranges and bananas are the best, since you don't need a fruit peeler. Preferably, you wash, cook, and peel all vegetables before eating them. Washing is never enough. I have had the occasional salad in China, but only from very reputable restaurants, and with the expectation that I might be regurgitating it later.
2. All poultry must be cooked to within an inch of its life. I was charring chicken for at least a week before I calmed down enough to realize that it didn't need to be turning black not to kill me.
3. All poultry must be purchased from organic food sources and wrapped in plastic. Open meat markets are a death trap. Literally, bins of meat sit out, in the sun, in the June humid heat of Shanghai, with flies buzzing around, landing in it, burrowing in it...beginning to see why I kept getting sick? Yeah, I haven't tried meat from a meat market in China, and I don't plan to before I leave.
4. Milk products. Forget it. I shouldn't have to explain this one. I like my milk without toxins.
5. I take more probiotics daily than you want to know. Yakult and acidophilus are my best friends. They keep my stomach fortified against bacteria.
For those of you who wonder what I eat daily, it looks like this: oatmeal for breakfast, nuts for a snack, chicken with cooked vegetables for lunch, carrots and/or apple with hard-boiled egg for snack, chicken and cooked vegetables for dinner. I do this every single day except for Friday and Saturday night, where I go to restaurants and enjoy the food culture of Shanghai. I stick to my rules, and I haven't gotten sick since early June, which is the longest I've been well since being in China.
Basically, I am now eating a very balanced diet. Essentially, it's incredibly healthy, with the right portions of everything. Michelle Obama would be so proud. And, you know what? I feel fabulous. I have lots of energy, and I never feel sluggish anymore.
But my point of this posting is this: cooking is far more important than people realize. It is the foundation of our lives. Without cooking, there is no food. Without food, nothing can get done. As an academic, most of my life is spent with ideas far larger than real life. I have generally scoffed at cooking for a long time as an activity that isn't as worthwhile as studying, or writing, or reading. China has brought me back down to reality. Reality is that I only get to play with cool ideas at Siemens if I do the laundry and make lunch first. Don't forget to pack the snacks! Drink water! You know, the stupid, logistical things that no one considers valuable in college. But, you know something? These life skills make college possible, make life possible. So, I thought I'd give cooking a shout out, because it has saved my health in China.
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