Food - Fundamental to organic life, it deserves more attention than it gets
By: Tom Cloyd
(Reviewed: 2026-05-12:0941 Pacific Time (USA))
English muffins with walnuts and raisins, baked / Image by T. Cloyd
Making and sharing food is one of the most fundamental things we do.
Some food comes to us essentially ready to eat - ripe fruit, fresh greens, and some fresh vegetables come to mind. But quite often food needs formal preparation to become accessible, much less edible. Getting to the nutrition in a coconut, for example, is challenging if one doesn't know the methods or have useful tools to use. And the vitamin A in a carrot is significantly unavailable to our body if that carrot is not cooked, as cooking breaks up the cell walls that contain that vitamin.
Sharing food is itself a highly significant act. In sharing, we strengthen social bonds which are utterly necessary for our survival and the development of our character. We also awaken memories of one of the most ancient satisfactions any of us have ever known: putting something satisfying in our mouth and belly. For these two profound reasons, sharing food is an archetypal experience.
The relationship between food and health has been understood for a remarkably long time. It has taken almost as long for us to achieve a detailed, scientific understanding of this relationship and its multiple dimensions.
Nutrition
From a very practical point of view, eating involves choice, if we are fortunate, and in modern times many of us are.
But choice without sound knowledge is apt to have random and even poor results. We need to know what we're doing. Most of the time, we have little real knowledge of the nutritional value of what we're eating. Sadly, many of us seem not to care. I urge that that's a serious mistake. Personally, it's a mistake I wish not to make.
So, I have been developing a powerful computer program that anyone can use to assist in making intelligent food choices, especially about plant-based protein sources. My emphasis is protein because this is a real problem for certain classes of people, and I happen to be in at least two of those classes. Many other people I know are in at least one of these classes. It is quite apparent to me that seriously inadequate attention is being given to this problem, and I, personally, do not want to engage in this kind of self-neglect.
I will make more sense of this on the first page of this section of my website: NutriMagnus - those who choose intelligent eating.
Recipes
I enjoy developing and sharing recipes that are more nutritious than most common versions (for example, see Mexican coffee). At the same time, I also enjoy those that are simply delicious and pleasurable (see Whole wheat/almond flour thumbprint cookies!).
I do not yet have nutritional analyses for each recipe, but that is planned and will appear in the near future.
FOR THE RECIPE LIST, please see the Nutrition & recipes sect,ion of the Sitemap
☀ ☀ ☀