When I was in school, if a student admitted she had forgotten to do her homework, the teacher’s response was almost predictable: “When you didn’t forget to eat, how did you forget your homework?”

I always found it amusing, since I did forget to eat sometimes and I wondered if that give me the permission to forget my homework. There are those who forget, and there are those who wait for mealtimes, but I’m sure both categories agree that food is important.

And while we all agree that food is a very important aspect of our lives, I think it is also the most abused. What concerns me more is that most of those who do want to regulate their food, either quantity or quality-wise, want to do it for regulating their weight. How many of us do it out of respect for our body?

Food is important, yes. But what is the importance of food in our lives? What is the real role it is playing? No, it is not merely to give us more energy. It is not merely to give us better health. Every cell in your body comes from food. It is the food you eat that is processed and eventually formed into cells that make up your body and the vibrations these cells carry influence your thoughts and attitude. So when you are eating, you are effectively eating the future you.

Everything has vibrations. And food carries the vibration it is exposed to. The thoughts that the farmer thought when he was growing the food influence it. The thoughts and words of the middlemen who brought the vegetables to the shop influence it. And the thoughts and words of the shop keeper or the vendor influence it. And if you are eating out, then the thoughts and words of the cook and waiter influence it.

Imagine a situation where the farmer was contemplating suicide due to his inability to pay back the loans, the middle-men were busy cheating the farmer and the vendor, the vendor was cursing the buyer for bargaining, and the cook had a fight with his wife or was upset about not getting a raise. What are you feeding yourself? Is this the vibration you want to have tomorrow?

Many of us experience an identity crisis a few years after we leave home. We were fortunate to belong to a generation which mostly ate home-cooked food, so for years we ate food cooked by our mothers with tender and loving care, care that influenced the vibrations of the food. And then we left home, started eating out, thereby changing the input to our systems. Is it a wonder we changed?

So how do we fix this? We respect our food. The next time you seek out that extra-cheese, over-salted, refined flour pizza created by people whose sole motivation was to make money, remind yourself that this is what is going to make the ‘you’ tomorrow.

An ideal situation would have been where we could have grown our own food with love, plucked them with love, chopped, cooked and served them with love. Not very practical, unfortunately. The least we can do is pray and express gratitude to the food – gratitude has been shown to alter water at a molecular level. If you want to be a more loving person tomorrow, eat the food with a focus on love. Want to be more happy, efficient or healthy? Just feel it as you eat it and usher in a whole new you!