Food is both fuel and medicine, but this doesn’t mean we have to strip it bare of its magic and reframe it as a power source for some robot-like, maximally efficient human body. Yes, the reality is that food is a basic, physical human need. It is fuel, in a sense, and by extension, we are machines that need fuelling. But we’re also thoughtful

But more than the new body size, it was the lightness of being that enthralled me; although I didn’t quite understand the connection between trusting myself around food and trusting less tangible hungers (for rest, contact, meaning), the relationship with food became the lens through which I began to see almost everything.

Gentle Foods is a space for people who are learning to better care for themselves through food.

We like to cook, but not all the time. We don’t count calories. We’re learning to divorce ourselves from the binary of “good” and “bad” foods and instead accept that foods do not have moral value. We care about health (and believe that “health” looks