Realising the depth of the pleasure, eroticism and sensuality that can exist within most of your daily life has helped me develop a better relationship with myself, other people and the world around me.

Sex is no longer about instant gratification, and neither is food. Food has always bought me joy in some form, but these days it is something radically different to what it was when I was younger. In the same way I've spoken before about there being sex, and then sex, there’s food and then there’s food.

From money to energy

When I was a child my mum, due her experiences of poverty, devised a game to help us be thrifty with our food. We'd each be given a pound and told to find the equivalent of a whole meal in the supermarket for the cost - tinned beans, cheap bread and Tesco value jam tarts were always my top pics because I LOVED beans on toast.

This was both an empowering and joyful way to help us navigate rising food prices as we got older. And by the time I was living in London on minimum wage it meant I could whip up a good meal out of basically nothing.

My favourite healthy comfort food sourced from Pingle Farm and Tofurei - tofu, brocolli, greens, soy, ginger & garlic

But it also meant for quite some time my relationship with food was about the cheapest way of gaining some form of nutrition. And while I knew a healthy diet consisted of the basics of 5 fruit and veg, and some protein and carbs, I spent my early adult life feeling exhausted within my body.

Over the past few years understanding my autism, gender dysphoria and exploring my sexuality has meant paying close attention to my body. And in turn that has meant paying attention to what I put into it. It unearthed for me the shattering effect gluten was having on me, and how I lacked energising minerals like iron and magnesium. Removing the former from my diet the last 6 months has in turn made me pay closer attention to the world around me. Thoughtfully seeking meals that are truly nourishing for my body energises me in a way that watching my bank balance didn't.

That said I'm lucky to be at a point in my life where changing my mindset in this way is accessible to me. Our food system is not set up to provide affordable nourishing healthy food - I'd go as far to say our capitalist system purposefully makes low energy food as cheap as chips because it keeps workers compliant.

Cultivating appreciation and participation

When I started cooking dinners for my family as a teenager it was transformational for me in two senses. One is that I started to pay more attention to what we were all eating and would flex my skills to respond to different people’s needs such as when my mum was dieting etc. And the second is that as an autistic person it was my way of saying “I’m here, I love you, but please leave me in peace” when we were gathering.

Me dishing up dinner for friends at a recent &Breathe gathering

This has continued into my adult life and for me it is an absolute joy to contribute to a group in this way. Cooking from scratch is a mindful activity that helps me focus my often scattered and overwhelmed brain. My brain appreciates every food item I touch (it’s one of the many reasons why I’m vegetarian because when my brain would focus in that much detail on a chicken thigh it used to make me want to vomit), and I really enjoy learning about different people’s dietary requirements and showing I care by adapting around their needs. All too often people are made to feel that they are an inconvenience when they need or want something different to others, but for me there is joy and pleasure in understanding the uniqueness of our relationship with food.

I really felt acknowledged for my connection with food and how I approach cooking when at an &Breathe gathering my friend Alvin said “I like eating your food, I can tell it’s cooked with love”. It might sound cheesy but love really is the key ingredient to ensuring our bodies stay healthy. If someone loves you, and loves the earth for the produce it generates, they cook in a way that centres that rather than for the destructive capitalist values of speedy consumption.

I think more people learning to appreciate and participate within the food system would radically improve our lives in a myriad of ways. A simple walk with my kids the other day to collect hazelnuts meant they got hours of exercise, they learnt more about each other and the land they live on, and because they had the joyful task of cracking them open its the first time either of them have enjoyed consuming nuts - an amazing source of fats, fiber, magnesium and vitamin E.

Straight from the earth

I've always been fascinated by where my food comes from but for a period of time I had to entirely forget that in order to survive living in London. I was living in a bubble whereby I'd have multiple coffees a day - probably one from Ethiopia and another from Costa Rica - followed by fruit and veg grown in Spain, Peru and Beyond.

When I moved out of London and started to feel the weight of the climate crisis I made stressful attempts to try find food with the least air mileage in the supermarket, until one of my partners pointed out those supermarkets are still going to be importing those goods whether I buy them or not so I gave up my tiny little rebellion because it was mentally exhausting me.

That was until I came to Wirksworth and discovered a small independent veg farm, Pingle Farm, who offer veg boxes for £15! Aside from tofu, carbs and snacks this basically makes up the bulk of our shopping. I was spending double this in supermarkets on fruit and veg, for items out of season, with less nutrition and flown thousands of miles.

When I visited Pingle the other day to volunteer and find out more about their journey as me and my partners would like to one day live communally and grow our own food, I literally sobbed as left. Seeing this beautiful space where you could feel the love emanating from the soil, and where everything you could possibly need to live was there right in front of me, just made the horror of the food system crash down on me like a tonne of bricks. We are being gaslit by society. There is enough land for everyone in the UK to have a more direct connection with their food, and to be able to grow most of what we need right on our doorsteps.

Aside from the global impact changing our growing and consumption habits would have the sheer amount of joy and pleasure I have had these past few weeks from picking the food that lands in mine and my neighbours veg boxes and from being creative with veg that is available has been transformational for my body and soul. The other day I went foraging with my closest friend, and when I came back all electrified my partner pointed out the many layers of delight I'd had from one afternoon of wandering in the sunshine, nibbling nuts and berries, and discovering the nutrients available to me from herbs like Mugwort growing everywhere on UK path ways. It would be faster to buy nuts and berries from the shop, but the time saved is no way near as valuable as the level of joy I gained from that afternoon.

Time is the real luxury in this system

There’s too much rhetoric on all sides shaming people with the idea that they either shouldn’t be struggling with food poverty, or they shouldn’t be struggling with healthy sustainable diets. Middle-class right wingers retort ridiculous things like “A jacket potato and beans only costs 70p to make” in response to people campaigning against food prices, while some Middle-class lefties scoff at those that eat Mcdonalds, and environmentalists can behave like whining martyrs when it comes to their food and farming activism.

I still cave sometimes and my kids Mcdonalds after a long day of them bickering, or when they are in a phase of refusing to eat something I feel is good for them. I didn’t own a microwave until very recently so there’s no way you would’ve caught me cooking jacket potato for kids who had gone into ‘hangry’ mode before I’d had a chance to get dinner on after a stressful day at work. And heck no I’m not a martyr for the sustainability-related stuff I get to do, it’s a fucking privilege that I get to do such life-affirming work when we live in a system that is sapping us all dry.

While I love that there are more and more simple guides for healthy and affordable eating, and that more community farms are cropping up and inviting people to volunteer, that’s simply not where most people are at when they are stuck in the daily grind of capitalism and the isolation of nuclear families.

My capacity for a more sustainable and enjoyable relationship with food has come from an entire shift in my lifestyle. My outgoings have reduced due to being able to move out of the city, my approach to work is less time intensive as a freelancer, my partner and I live and work more and more collectively with others every day, and my kids are raised by multiple households due to co-parenting with my ex. Some of these shifts have been painful and the process caused me to have less time and money for good food at times, but having the confidence to jump headfirst into this shift to an entirely different way of living comes from having both a depth of love and support from the people around me and knowing it’s the only way we’ll escape a system that is burning us to the ground.

If we want people to engage in and demand healthy sustainable forms of food production and consumption we first need to meet them with love and care for all layers of their lives, value their time and open their world to the energising forces of pleasure. Pleasure doesn’t happen as a result of shame, and time can’t be magically created when your time is owned by capitalist corporations.