If you think of good health as an investment in three different kinds of activities — eating, moving and relaxing — then I would say that many, if not most, of the human endeavors that best exemplify these activities actually occur at their intersections.  

As the school bus pulled away almost every afternoon when I was growing up in New Jersey, I would drop my bag and head off to spend time in the 600 acres of woods directly across the street from my house.  Those walks that I took in the woods every day after school cleared my mind, calmed my brain, focused my thoughts, and piqued my appetite.  I came inside ready for food, homework, and whatever else was about to come my way.

Last summer there were many days when I started dinner by collecting arms full of Swiss chard and tomatoes, knowing that my daughter and I had nailed together the boards to make a raised bed, had filled that bed with yards of compost and topsoil, and had watered and weeded and weeded some more.  It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly is mine.  Watching vegetables grow — I can’t think of a more pleasant way to enjoy a late summer afternoon!  

This morning I was invited to share in a most generous meal.  Plans to spend time with my new friend, Judith, turned into an invitation to eat poached salmon with mint pesto, strained yogurt cheese with za’atar [hyssop] and crusty bread, caramelized Brussels sprouts, carrot and blueberry salad, olives, homemade baked goods and dark chocolate truffles.  The mint for the pesto came from the local supermarket, but it usually comes from her mother’s mint patch, lovingly tended not far from here.  The Brussels sprouts tasted as if they had been sprayed with a light coating of honey.  They had not; patience was the secret ingredient, she said.  We laughed together when I shared my own discovery that nothing cannot be made delicious in 8 hours at 250 degrees.  

Also for brunch we enjoyed an embroidered beribboned table runner, matching milky white serving dishes on pedestals, thoughtful conversation, dreams for the future, sincere admiration for all kinds of work well done and stories well told, and friends, silver and gold.   

Yes, you can purchase food for a few coins through a small window while you remain seated in your car.  You can put that stuff into your mouth, and use it to make hunger pangs disappear for a little while.  But it is not an investment in good health.  It is just calories without history, calories to which you have no connection.  And because it consists of eating without movement or relaxation, you receive only a little bit of sustenance.  At the end of the day, it’s a question of how we nourish ourselves, in the broadest sense possible.