pleasure is the answer

Nina is 28 years old and has recently become a Holistic Nutritionist. She resides in Sydney, Australia.

What is your favorite fruit and why?

Mangoes. I’m from Costa Rica and mango season is the best there. Every time I have a mango, I feel so close to home. When I visit, my mom buys kilos of mangoes to have in the kitchen to make me happy -laughs- 

Tell me a bit about where you are from and where you are now

I was born in Australia but moved back to Costa Rica when I was 3 years old with my mom. She was a single parent and my whole family, who is Costa Rican, lives there. I grew up in San José and didn’t know anything different from living there, but when I was 17 or 18, I knew I had a New Zealand passport and became fixated on leaving. As soon as I finished school, I moved to New Zealand and eventually Australia. Right now, I’m in Sydney. 

What are the differences in food culture between Costa Rica and Australia?

In Costa Rica, there is more closeness with your food and where it comes from. Every Saturday I would go to the market down the hill. Everyone there was a farmer and was selling you what they grew. Growing up, I was unaware of how good and fresh that food was. Rice and beans, tortillas and fresh fruit are standard. It was a delicious way of eating. 

In Australia, we grow most things ourselves but the markets are more expensive than the supermarket, it’s more of a go get a nice breakfast and coffee experience. We eat cereal for breakfast, toast for lunch, and have a roast dinner. I love it now, but when I got here it was kind of shocking to me -laughs- 

In Costa Rica, at age 7, you are already in charge of making rice, beans, and chickpeas. You can make them perfectly. When I arrived in New Zealand and was living in student housing, I thought that everyone would be cooking. It turned out that everyone had bought into the buffet style of eating at the cafeteria, and I was the only one cooking -laughs- 

There is also a multicultural aspect of eating in Australia. I had never had curry when I was growing up. In Costa Rica when you go out to eat, you’re eating Costa Rican food mostly, or pizza -laughs- 

I think pizza and fried chicken are so ubiquitous. They are delicious in every language, every culture -laughs- 

What is your favorite place in the world to eat?

Chubascos in Alajuela, Costa Rica. It’s up the mountain before you get to Volcán Poás and has been there for years. It’s traditional Costa Rican food, like rice and beans, tortilla aliñada, the most famous thing on their menu, which is a huge tortilla with cheese. They grow a lot of their own food and the strawberries that grow at the top of the mountain are the best in the world. I always get fresh strawberry juice and a vegetarian casado every time I go. It’s the loveliest place and I always go the first week of my visit home, and right before I leave, too. 

What is your favorite junk food?

I’m a cake fanatic. I love a vanilla cake with strawberries, a great frosting. 

What is your favorite health food?

Ramen, sushi, kimchi, crunchy tofu, seaweed salad. I love that.

What is your take on eating and cooking as art forms?

I grew up watching The Food Network and I love a good Netflix show about beautiful food, but I think it can influence the home cook. We can think that is how we should be eating, but art doesn’t have to be visual or textural, it can also be emotional. Consuming food should be an art form, too. You should do it with thought and intention, as often as possible, even if it’s a bowl of cereal.

What does food mean to you?

I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with food -laughs- Right now, food is comfort, pleasure, enjoyment. Sometimes that means reaching for something convenient so that my life can be more comfortable and pleasurable. Sometimes that means laboring over a huge pan of cinnamon rolls or letting a batch of sauerkraut ferment.

Food is also a way for me to connect with home when I’m so far away. I’m looking for things that remind me of my family. I’m asking my mom how she makes her lentils and the recipe for her banana bread. 

How did you figure out what food makes you feel nourished?

The pandemic kind of forced this because I was stuck at home in Costa Rica and the things I would normally gravitate towards, after many years living in Australia with a health food store with all vegan alternatives at close proximity always, were not available to me. It was just last year that I surrendered to it all, and finally gave myself permission to eat anything and everything. I don’t think until you are ready to do that, will you find what is really nourishing for you, because that’s when there won’t be any rules.

I had this idea that baking was not nourishing, but it was really because I was scared to bake and potentially eat an entire cake by myself. Now, I’ve been baking a lot because I love sweets, I love a slice of cake on a Wednesday afternoon. That is so nourishing to me.

Eating anything and everything feels a bit scary, why is it so hard for women?

We’ve grown up with capitalism which is controlled by white men who want to keep women, and people in general, small, confused, and in a daze so that they are more easily controllable. That sounds like a conspiracy theory -laughs- but you can look back and see how often the beauty ideals change and how they correlate to major events. For example, when women got the right to vote the beauty ideals changed. Suddenly you had to be impossibly thin. 

We always think that we are the ones that are weird, or weak and that we’ve fallen victim to wanting to make ourselves smaller. We grow up and don’t notice it, but one ad will be about eating all of the food and the next is about losing all of the weight. Bikini bodies are rated on magazines, women bond about how much they hate their bodies, and then you inevitably end up repeating the same cycle. Now you are talking about how much you hate your thighs and how much your friend hates her ass. It's this constant rhetoric that is socially acceptable and incredibly sad. Ultimately you want to lose weight, be desirable, fit in, and be accepted so that you can feel safe. 

It’s tedious and it’s always changing. There was the grapefruit diet, then the no sugar diet, then it was don’t eat any carbs, now don’t eat any fat, wait, now only eat fat! In reality, health is so much more than food. But, diets and shakes are the easiest and simplest things to sell.

We’ve been programmed to believe that if we let ourselves eat whatever we want, we’ll completely lose control. You might lose control for a few weeks, and those will probably be the hardest weeks. Coming out of that, you’ll realize that the things that you used to put on a pedestal have lost their power. When you give yourself that full permission, you realize that everything is always there (if you are lucky enough to have access to food). You’re not in this scarcity, last supper mentality which always happens before you go on a diet. You don’t have this idea that you have to eat everything because tomorrow it won’t be there. People think they are addicted or obsessed with food, but the reality is that a feeling of addiction is a symptom of restriction.

Eating intuitively isn’t easy because you have to continue to tell yourself, despite everything the world is telling you, I’m going to do what I want. 

Should women talk to each other about what they don’t like about their bodies?

Say, you are talking to your friend about your body, and she has a similar or different body to yours and you are complaining about your thighs. I think about how it affects the person I’m talking to. The person I love and care about, to whom I would never bring up the size of their thighs. I would never point out what is wrong with their body, why do I feel like I need to point out what is wrong with my body? We have a huge responsibility when it comes to the discussions we engage in. If we are constantly complaining and validating, then we are stuck in base-level discussions that get us nowhere. We should try and stop, bring awareness and begin to change the conversation whenever possible. 

It’s important to figure out if there is something that is stopping you from living your life. If you have a specific problem with your body, and you need to communicate it, I would suggest therapy as a better place to discuss it.

What are the top tips you would give to women when it comes to taking pleasure in food?

We are all under the impression that we should be able to automatically eat intuitively after years of not doing so, and that’s not realistic. I recommend reading Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch (the latest edition as it’s an evolving body of research). Make sure you have a good support system so you don’t feel isolated. Start unfollowing anyone who makes you feel small, less than, or like you need to do something to look similar to them. You can have an enjoyable experience on social media depending on the people you follow. Expand your beauty ideals by following people who don’t look like you. Go back to your childhood and the food that you really enjoyed eating and make and eat those things. Make it a social gathering, enjoy food with people you love. Take the time to sit down and savor every bite. Follow a new recipe, go to a new restaurant, buy a new cookbook. Inject story, emotion, novelty back into food.

What is your vision for the women of the world when it comes to eating and cooking?

My goal is to bring pleasure back into the equation. For the longest time, we’ve demonized pleasure. If we enjoy what we eat then it must be sinful. I want women to feel at ease around food, excited, and I want them to have a sustainable relationship with it. Health and wellness don’t have to be stressful. Pleasure is the answer to so many things.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.