Permaculture: A Back-to-Basics Approach to Food

Permaculture is all about taking a bird’s eye view to energy exchange, but the practice refers to designing and maintaining biological ecosystems that are self-sustaining.

Basically, permaculture is a way of approaching life that is meant to adopt the way of nature instead of fighting with it.

Permaculture makes decisions by considering all the needs of the system and the most effective way to meet those needs.

Exchanges from inside the system to outside the system are minimized and specific to accomplishing a goal. The main goal of this permaculture is to use what we have and waste as little as possible.

When this goal is achieved, every part of the system contributes to the greater whole while also serving its own individual purpose.

The idea is to exist fully in flow with your little world, and your little world exists in harmony with the greater world around you.

This approach to energy exchange is what I, Brooke Trogdon, personal chef, nutrition coach, founder, and owner of Fractal Soul Food, bring to the table.

The foundation of this integrative framework is hidden in the name Fractal Soul Food.

A fractal is a never-ending pattern that is self-similar across scales.

This concept of a fractal allows us to imagine the complexity of a food web and how that scales down to the food choices we make on a daily basis.

What the fractal tells us is that if we understand how the parts of an ecosystem work together, we can then transfer that knowledge to maintaining our personal environment.

Due to the self-similar nature of fractals, our foundation in permaculture can enable us to create more sustainable systems for nourishing ourselves.

To guide you through this shift in mindset, we must first understand how nature works together to create ecosystems,..but what exactly is an ecosystem, and how does it relate?

An ecosystem is a complex network of interactions between living and nonliving things. All parts of the ecosystem are connected by three processes: nutrient cycling, water cycling, and energy flow.

Energy flow accounts for the transfer of energy between hosts while nutrient and water cycling both involve the distribution of elements and compounds throughout the system.

All three of these processes are required to sustain life on Earth, and the same processes are involved in sustaining life in our own bodies.

All these processes encompass our basic needs for nourishment.

Energy comes in the form of calories (but not all energy is created equal!).

Nutrients and water are the whole reason why we eat and drink.

If we stopped drinking water, we would die before a month was up.

While environments can be adaptable, they still suffer from neglect.

By understanding how ecosystems work together to function, we can have a better understanding of how to make intuitive food choices that balance each other in practice.

Imagine a forest.

Diversity, abundance, and variation in color are all hallmarks of a productive forest.

The same could be said for a healthy plate.

We want to see variety because this lets us know that there is balance.

Too much of one thing is almost always a recipe for disaster in the natural world.

While having one of anything won’t ruin your ability to meet future goals, habits create systems and systems create results.

If your systems aren’t creating the results you’re looking for, you need to re-evaluate and pivot your decision making.

When we think of permaculture, what we’re really looking for is human-designed systems that work as deeply with the natural world as possible. This requires education, observation, and patient diligence.

When we think of how permaculture applies to eating, it’s really about creating a whole lifestyle that supports the goals you have for yourself.

Our bodies are constantly seeking homeostasis and balance, so our challenge is to create systems that maintain balance for our bodies while also pushing us to evolve our habits.

This is the work of a lifetime.

While we may have gotten out of sync with what nature asks of us, integrative functional nutrition is a way of acknowledging the whole system in our approach to living well.

This article is only an introduction.

Fractal Soul Food is dedicated to exploring holistic nutrition in a sustainable way.

Whether you need a personal chef to simplify your eating habits or a nutrition coach to lend whole-self support in making lasting transformations, check out fractalsoul.com to stay connected with Fractal Soul Food.