Adaptation - A Kitchen Compass for Modern Food
Before we learnt to read labels, we learnt to read leaves. Hunger taught the first lessons; the forest tested us. A berry could be breakfast or a warning. The tongue became both compass and alarm. Food was learnt by experience, not by reading.
With time, we salted, dried and fermented in the kitchen—turning short seasons into stores. That was our first map: practical wisdom shared by word of mouth, shaped by weather, land and survival.
Then came the age of lack. Deficiency left its marks on bodies long before we had names for them. Sailors crossed oceans with barrels of meat and hard biscuit, and still their gums bled; the sea starved them not of fish, but of citrus. Elsewhere, brittle bones and rough skin told of lightless winters and narrow diets; oily fish, liver and, later, fortified milk were quiet medicines before we spoke of vitamins. Practice came before theory.
Today we live in plenty, but much of it wears the mask of convenience. The aisle never sleeps; labels and promises shine louder than the food itself. Ultra-processed foods make life easy, while the supplement shelf offers to repair what the trolley helped to fray. Science gives us better tools—glucose curves, gut microbes—but the compass still spins in noise. With so many voices and so much marketing, it is hard to know which way to turn. Between knowledge and marketing, it’s easy to feel lost.
This essay sets some bearings. Environmental Functional Cuisine (EFC) is the method that follows—diet and nature held in the same hand. It links plate to soil, water and season; meets real bodily needs while minimising harm to the places that feed us. In a fragile climate, EFC means sourcing and cooking with the environment, not against it: function and ecology aligned—without forgetting joy.
Fragments of practice – a small compass
Open to change and interpretation.
Roots first. Keep heritage staples in rotation—grains, pulses, brassicas, small fish, preserved fruits—and adapt to place and season.
Minimal meddling. Cook more than you buy formulated foods. Soak, sprout, pickle, stew, bake.
Cook from the calendar. Local, in-season foods need less decoration and less fuel to reach you.
Listen inward. Trust quiet metrics—sleep, mood, digestion, steady energy—over shouted labels.
Patterns over promises. Prefer foods and habits that survive both tradition and research.
Ethical bias. Keep producers and places in the story: fair pay, animal welfare, soil health.
EFC in practice (diet + nature)
Sourcing: favour nearby, seasonal, mixed-farm produce; avoid routine air-freight; choose small oily fish (sardines, mackerel); buy loose to cut packaging. Frozen vegetables, tinned beans and fish, and simple grains also belong here when fresh or local options are out of reach.
Biodiversity: rotate varieties, embrace ‘ugly’ crops, cook root-to-stem and, when used, nose-to-tail.
Energy & water: batch-cook; lid-on simmer; pressure-cook beans; cool and reheat once; save veg-rinse water for herbs.
Waste: plan portions; preserve gluts (pickles, ferments, freezing); make stock from trimmings; compost the rest.
Footprint heuristics: two-thirds of the plate plants; two-thirds of the basket local/seasonal; under 5% of food binned each week.
A simple plate can carry this without speeches: beans simmered with onion and bay; cabbage quick-braised with garlic; a spoon of something sour to wake the mouth; bread with a real crust; enough butter to feel looked after. Nothing heroic, everything intelligible. Food that leaves you steady rather than overstimulated, and a kitchen that returns its peelings to the soil that fed it.
Risk once sat in the plant; later, in the absence; today, often in the excess—of processing, of choice, of noise. Adaptation is attention. EFC is the map—roots and science aligned with season and soil—repeated, quietly, meal by meal.