While the origin of Valentine’s Day is associated with romance, love is relevant in all relationships. Families and friends celebrate in many different ways all around the time of February 14. While the random acts of love and kindness may not be as ubiquitous as at Christmas time, this day is filled with flowers and sweets and connections.

Offices fill their candy dishes and some businesses give free candy. Individuals send cards, often accompanied with treats as a means of expressing appreciation.

As you’re thinking about how to express your love this weekend, perhaps you will consider healthy treats. Keeping your food simple and healthy will be the most loving thing you can do for yourself and others. Finding ways that are heart-felt and playful will mean more than foods laden with sugar and processed foods.

You can choose fruits for sweets and nuts for decadent treats. Honey is very sweet (but only use if you have no sugar sensitivity) and stevia are choices to sweeten your foods. Cacao all by itself is awesome!

Celebrate love!

Since becoming acquainted with Jeanie Marshall’s Ask Yourself Empowering Questions Video, I often consider what questions might be the most empowering for me to suggest that you ask yourself.

Perhaps you’ve come to this web site for answers. I certainly hope to provide you with some answers, or perhaps better yet, choices so that you can find the best answer for yourself. And today, I have some questions.

Do you Choose Food or Nutrients?

Some people who think "I’ve just got to have food" are likely to grab a pizza or candy bar or something else that’s readily available or advertised with an enticing jingle.

However, people who think, "I’ve just got to have nutrients" are more likely to think about getting such things as minerals, enzymes, amino acids, vitamins, pH balance, range of nutrition, or energy.

Many of the items readily available in stores, even so-called healthy stores, are so highly processed that they have few nutrients remaining. These products are so familiar and available that they have become the norm. It’s not that everyone eats them, but the demand is extremely high for items that are manufactured into a box so that they can sit on the shelf for years.

On the other hand, choosing fresh food that’s closest to its natural state is a choice for nutrients. An orange that you peel and eat is a whole food with enzymes and vitamins and taste; it will hydrate your system. An orange drink sweetened with high fructose corn syrup will pull nutrients from your system and dehydrate you, making you hungrier for more of the same or similar foods.

Do You Choose the Same Type of Food Today as Yesterday?

I remember reading several years ago that most people eat essentially the same 12 items regularly. That doesn’t mean that everyone eats the same 12 items, but that most people choose from a very narrow and similar selection each day.

Initially, the body usually finds unfamiliar items distasteful, then the items became familiar, and then they become the norm. Let’s take coffee, for example. The first sip of coffee is usually quite distasteful. It’s bitter. Some neutralize or sweeten the taste with dairy or sugar in some variation. Coffee shops have some very ingenious ways to disguise the taste of coffee.

Without doubt, drinking coffee is the norm in many parts of the world. Most people who have become accustomed to drinking coffee and then want to stop drinking coffee must make a conscious choice, often struggling for days or weeks with that choice. If you regularly drink coffee, it’s much easier to keep drinking it than to choose something else.

I’m using coffee as an example only because most people can relate to it. I could have chosen another example: donuts or chocolate or sugar or popcorn or carrots or smoothies. The key is that we all tend to gravitate to familiar foods and create a habit of eating them.

Are Your Favorite, Familiar Foods Giving You the Necessary Nutrients?

If you feel great physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually day after day, the answer may be yes. As time passes and your body has less tolerance for non-nutritious food, you can maintain or regain your health by being attention to your food choices. And more importantly, to choose foods that contain nutrients.

Years ago, the Movie Super Size Me (2004) was in the theaters. My husband and I had heard enough about it to know that we were not the intended audience. I’ve never eaten in a MacDonald’s and my husband has only a few times when avoiding it would have caused more problems than deciding to be with the guys. Later when the movie was on DVD, we decided to watch it.

It was a very difficult movie for us to watch. At the same time, I must say that it’s a very powerful presentation of how devastating it can be to eat foods that are devoid of nutrients, meal after meal, day after day. Yes, Morgan Spurlock’s experiment was an extreme. Or was it? For many, consuming foods without minerals or enzymes is the very reason for illness with age.

When You Eat Today, Will you Be looking for Food or Nutrients?

You make choices all day long about a variety of things. When eating or choosing not to eat something, you make a decision.

I honestly don’t know what the right choices are for you. I just encourage you to ask yourself this or a similar question that empowers you to make a choice that nourishes your body.