The backlash is passing. Today I am examining the twin dragons of extremes and moderation. See, the 25% cooked foods, if they include things I love like hot bread, keep the doors of cravings open. If I "allow" myself a little bit, then eventually I will hit a really bad day -- or two or three -- and will glut on a lot. That's the moderation, playing with fire (no pun).
But what constitutes "extreme" in this society, the consuming of mostly or all uncooked foods, has so far always led to backlash too; I just get sick of raw foods and have to stuff myself with everything that I've been "denied".
There is no way around that fact that really bad days are always going to happen, regardless of what I put in my mouth. If one believes the people who have been high-to-all-raw for many years, they all say it gets easier, that your taste adjusts, that your body changes, etc. But if one cannot stay raw enough long enough for that process to take hold, then that advice just makes one feel weak and stupid. And I think that many people who would like the benefits of high-raw life hit this same wall. For some of us, food is just too much pleasure, with its encompassing social rituals and myths and built-in excuse of being an essential requirement for biological life.
So where do I go from here, if the option of moderation leads to wreckage and the option of extremes leads to wreckage? The only way to cure any disease, be it individual or societal or planetary, is to change the underlying conditions that are creating the environment for diseased states. The deepest level that I can perceive here is that level of too much pleasure; THAT's where the addiction lives. I know the Buddha had a lot to say about food and its addictive properties, but I have never taken the time to study the suttas and formal discourses on the matter. Will more "information" help me, when my arms are vibrating in pain and I have to do another massage on a 300 pound person and I still don't have the money to pay the yellow-page bill due tomorrow -- and the last thing I want is a cold blended bunch of kale?
I guess it depends how much truth I discern in that information and to what degree I can put it into action. And once I answer the 86 emails piling up, get my office vacuumed before the next client, and call the bank to find out why they lost another important document I sent them, maybe then I'll have the time to start studying the Enlightened One's roadmap to avoid this mess. And I'd better do it while I can still rationalize having a morning coffee!!