Before you sit down to eat a meal, there are several things to be done first. You must prepare the space where you will eat so that it is conducive to eating mindfully, with your full attention and awareness. When you are serving, you must choose how much food you will eat. If you are with others, you must connect with them, joyfully, understanding how precious it is to have friends and loved ones with whom to share food. And, you must look deeply into the food you are about to eat, recognizing that it is truly a miracle that it has come to be on your plate.

One of the most important things we do for ourselves and for each other is to choose what foods we will put into our bodies.

But, choosing what foods to eat is becoming more and more difficult, with so many new food products appearing every day. This choice, though, is one that we all must look into deeply if we are to change our relationship with food.

Mindful eating allows us to see deeply into the foods we eat, and we come to understand that there are three main considerations when choosing what foods will nourish our bodies and minds – morality, healthfulness and frugality.

How do you think about food? Do you see a miracle in a cucumber? The whole Earth in a plum? Do you see preparing food as a loving way to nourish yourself and others? Do you choose the foods you eat carefully, knowing they will become a part of you? When you look at an acorn squash, do you see the farmer who planted it? The rain and the sunshine that helped it to grow? The tired worker who harvested it? The driver of the truck who traveled through storms to deliver it to your town? The young produce clerk who set it so tenderly on the supermarket shelf? Do you see other humans around the world and around the corner who don’t have enough nutritious food to eat?

When I meet a person for the first time, I imagine which foods they love the very most, which foods delight their senses, which ones embody their childhood, which they choose when they are sick, which remind them of their grandfather, their first love, their firstborn. I wonder which they choose when they are in a grocery store or at a farmer’s market surrounded by so many different foods – plump, ripe fruits, bright and glistening vegetables, grains, spices…. I imagine preparing a simple, sublime meal for us to eat together, because we are humans working and playing and living together on this planet, and sharing food is one of the ways we care for each other and care for ourselves.