Food a great-grandmother would recognize

Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius that natural desires have a limit, while desires born of false opinion have none. Hunger ends when the body has had enough. The wish for more of something designed to be wished for does not end.

A large part of the modern food supply is designed that way. Flavors, textures and portions are tested until they are hard to stop eating. From the seller’s side this is good engineering. From the eater’s side it breaks the signal that used to tell us we were full.

Our practice starts with subtraction. We remove what did not exist a hundred years ago: seed oils, refined sugar, products with more ingredients than a recipe. Then we wait. After a few weeks appetite becomes quieter. Meat, eggs, fish, butter, vegetables and fruit in season are enough again.

Hunger ends when the body has had enough.

Only then do we add things back, slowly and one at a time. Bread from a good baker. Cheese from a farm we know. Rice, potatoes and beans, prepared the way our grandparents prepared them. Each food earns its place by how we feel after eating it, over weeks, at our own table.

We call this food a great-grandmother would recognize. The rule is simple enough for a child. What she would not recognize stays on the shelf.

None of this is new. Without the seed oils, the sugar and the packets, what remains is close to how most Italian families ate until the middle of the last century. We are describing a practice we keep. Anyone with a medical condition should make changes together with their own doctor.