Finding Joy Through Food

March 27, 2025

Olivia Torbert

At Ecdysis, we believe regenerative agriculture creates life. When done well, one farm can have a cascading effect on supporting life; it can support soil teeming with microbiotic communities, diverse above-ground ecosystems, a good livelihood for a farming family, and food for the rest of us. We could talk about the same system in terms of what you should reduce; carbon emissions, chemical inputs, and tilling. While this has its place, we’ve often found that thinking about the life created rather than the destruction avoided yields better long term results.

Let's take this same idea and apply it to a related topic we all struggle with: eating well.

A lot of advice we’re given is about what not to eat and why we should feel guilty about what we do eat. This might just be me, but when I’m told what not to do, I immediately begin seeing the forbidden fruit (err… potato chips in this case?) as the single most desirable thing in the world. 

It doesn’t have to be like this. Eating well isn’t about making sacrifices or rules, it’s about maximizing the life, meaning, and excitement our food can give us. 

Food brings life and meaning in a variety of different ways: 

• Who grew it and made it

• How they grew and made it

• The family and friends I share it with

• How it benefits my health

• How the money I paid for it benefits my community

• The enjoyment of cooking and learning new skills

• To provide for others

I almost never eat a meal that leaves me feeling good in all of these ways. But instead of getting bogged down in the minutiae of how sustainably sourced my food is, how healthy it is for me, or how much it will cost me, I try to think about how to maximize the joy and meaning I get from each meal. Long term, I’ve found this yields habits I can stick with, and lets me enjoy every meal much more. Below, I’ll dive into a few ways you can get excited about the food you eat.

Seeking sustainably produced foods.

As Wendell Berry put it “Eating is an agricultural act.” We all know there are a million definitions for sustainably produced food, and at Ecdysis we are constantly reevaluating our own definitions. For me, sustainably grown food means food that was grown in a way that created more life in the process. I feel excited when I feel good about how my food was grown, and I chase this excitement for all it’s worth.

Caring about who grows and prepares your food

This past September, a number of us presented our research at an event hosted by the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. Over lunch, the chefs told us about the importance in Potowatami culture of bringing spirit and intention into the food you grow and prepare. While this may not be a mainstream idea in American culture, we all understand this concept and how tangibly it affects the food you eat. It matters who is preparing your food. Any food that was made with human hands must be better than any made in a factory. And all the better if I know the person. The more I get excited about who prepared my food, and how, the better quality food I end up eating.

Feeling good about how you get your food

In our line of work, I’m deeply aware of the ways our growers are not fairly compensated for the food they grow. I am also not limitlessly wealthy. But knowing that the dollars, time, or effort I spent to get the food I eat is contributing to my local community and land enriches my life and the lives of those around me. Maybe it’s buying from a local grower, maybe it's trading extras from the garden with a friend. The better I feel about how I got my food, the better it tastes.

I also love when my food is a labor of love. When I can grow my own food, ferment my own wine, bake my own bread, and share it all with others, my life suddenly seems all the richer. Viewing food as a hobby, rather than a task, was revolutionary to me, especially when sharing that hobby connects me with other people. 

On our work trips, a good meal can mean eating lunch in the middle of a field and pulling whatever we can find out of the coolers. In this case, we found watermelon. It can also mean eating eggs we bought from a local farmer and homemade leek and asparagus flan made by our colleague Liza Chang. 

Eating in Community

I love cooking with people. I love potlucks. I love feeling part of the community when I eat out at the local burger joint. We, as humans, feel closer to people after we share a meal with them. Social scientists call this phenomenon commensality. This may seem like a truth we inherently know, but in the era of microwaves and Doordash, researchers are finding tangible benefits to your mental, physical, and social health when you make a habit of eating with others. I love taking care of the people around me by sharing the food I feel proud of eating, no matter the effort I went through to grow, buy, or forage for it. In turn, I find the people around me appreciate this effort and follow suit. We all end up eating better for it.

Our team hosts many potlucks at the lab. This is the annual shrimp boil held every January by Roger Brown, our shrimp boil consultant. Gathering with others to partake in commensality helps us get through the cold winter months here in South Dakota. (The Hawaiian shirts help a bit too). 

Seeking food that makes you feel good

Getting excited about food that makes you feel good, no matter what that might mean for you, invites an opportunity to cultivate an attitude of positivity and abundance toward food. I used to eat a lot of ultra-processed food and it was pretty hard for me to genuinely prefer whole foods over processed foods for a long time. The switch finally flipped when I stopped telling myself ultra-processed food was bad for me and began getting excited for the energy and good feelings that whole foods gave me. We all react to food differently and paying close attention to the foods that make you feel good, and eating more of them, always pays off.

Be kind about the realities of modern life

Finally, a mentor of mine, who has spent his entire life researching food and eating habits, once said to me “I care about food, but I also have a teenager. When she’s hangry, the single thing going through my head is the quickest way to get food into her. At that moment, I don’t care if it's McDonalds, I’m going to feed her.” I recall this story to remind myself that life is complicated. For us in the agricultural world, food is important, but don’t give yourself a rule that will get in the way of life. 

So how do we pair these all together?

So yes, I get most excited about eating when the ingredients were grown well, were cooked, baked, or processed with care, are something I feel good about paying for with my money, time, or effort, and I get to share with people I love. With that said, I know most of my meals can’t achieve all of these aims. My message to you is to not feel too bad about that, just get excited about what you do well. Before long, you’ll find that more and more of your meals are worth getting excited about, and you’ll feel like you're bringing a little more life into the world. 

Our team enjoying a meal together in Albany, New York this past summer.