What is food?  Have you ever really stopped to ask yourself this question?  I mean, we eat it everyday, we buy it at the grocery store, and we order it in restaurants, but do we ever really take the time to understand exactly what it is we are putting into our bodies?

This was a question that forever changed my relationship with food.

Like many people, I enjoyed a diet of no restrictions.  You know, the whenever-I’m-hungry-for-whatever-I-want diet.  It was a successful diet in the sense that I did not die. But in many ways it was extremely unhealthy. I certainly put on a few pounds and lacked any sort of energetic enthusiasm. Yet my hunger was quenched and my desires satisfied. This was how I lived most of my life.

Then after x amount of time studying food and learning about life, I came across a book that brought me to an amazing revelation: when we eat, we are eating the sun.

Now this may either seem trivial or completely nonsensical, but in either case I’ll elaborate.  Regardless of what you eat (meat or veggies), you are digesting the sun.  The logic goes like this: the sun’s rays are energy that is photosynthesized by plants and turned into calories (either in fruit or the actual plant).  Plants are the middlemen that transfer energy from the sun to humans…or to animals.  In this sense, if you eat an animal, which has eaten a plant, you are still eating the sun.

To some, this is obvious, but for me it was not.  And it was only the beginning of a much greater realization.

As all matter is derived from stars (understood from the concept that exploding stardust shot across the universe from a dying star gives birth to a new generation of stars and planets), our human bodies are literally made of the stars.  As we ingest our carbon-based foodstuffs, we are eating parts of the universe, both from the deepest reaches of the cosmos and from our nearest star, the sun.

The idea that we consume our universe on a daily basis took my realization a step further: food is what connects us to our planet, our solar system, and the greater universe—the genuine tie between the heavens and earth.

In this sense, we are a part of a cycle that is constantly changing, digesting, evolving, and moving. Energy and matter flow through creation, giving life, light, and existence.  It is captured in one form and released in another.  Our experience of energy comes to us on a plate and leaves us through our actions (yoga, running, talking, etc.).  We transmit the energy of the universe by first digesting it in our stomachs. Then we cultivate it with our thoughts.  These thoughts turn into our actions, which send vibrations to those we come in contact with.  It is in this way that we transfer energy.  We are organic systems that transmute physical energy into vibration.  This vibration can mold life just as food molds our body.

This idea—that a long-lost star is living today through my actions, generated by my thoughts, which were fueled by the energy that was derived from the food I ate—really blows me away.  We are much more connected than we will admit. In every action we take, we are an expression of the entire universe.

It is with this knowledge that I choose to look at food differently. Instead of just fuel, it has become my means of passing on a universal chain letter. In order to reach the highest vibration, I choose to honor myself and those I come into contact

with, with the best food. Using this high vibration-energy, I write messages of love and light with the ink of my actions and thoughts. In this way, I can partake in the dance—or the dinner—of the universe.

When seen in this light, food quality is directly related to the quality of life. It is the yoga of our existence. We owe it to the universe to eat healthy.