Real or fake?
Katerina Pavlakis 
I turned my phone to black and white... here's what happened.
Two weeks ago I turned my phone screen to black and white.
I had read it would make the phone less addictive, but I didn't expect such a 'small thing' to make such a profound difference.
Surely, reigning in my distracted scrolling habit would be most effective if I established the right rules and better habits around my phone use. What does the screen colour have to do with that?
As it turns out, everything.
At first, it was really weird. My phone got ugly.
The pictures looked flat. Notifications became harder to see (50 shades of grey are still all grey). Everything looked 'wrong'.
But it only took a couple of days and I noticed the automatic urge to pick up the phone was waning.
I still used my phone, of course, but it was more intentional, less automatic, and far easier to stop.
Another few days, and I distinctly remember looking up from the grey-on-grey screen to face the lush green hedge, and feeling... relieved. Relief that the real world was right in front of me, in full glory, and so much more beautiful than on my screen.
And that's when it struck me: it used to be the other way around.
The world on my screen used to look crisper, brighter, better... more attractive that the real world. Looking up from it to face reality used to be almost disappointing. The pull back to that 'retina display' irresistible.
But now that I had flipped the greyscale switch, the emperor had lost his clothes. The spell was broken. My phone was becoming more boring than 'being bored'. All without putting down any rules, time trackers and app blockers.
I'm stunned at the difference this simple change has made.
I'm also stunned to realise how insidiously deep our ubiquitous screens get to mess with our brains.
And I can't help thinking of food packaging.
Bright, bold and colourful, with crisp pictures of oozing cakes, glossy frosting, happy cows and smiling children. With reassuring labels like high fibre, low fat, heart healthy and all-natural.
Yet what's inside tends to be dead, empty and full of artifice. What used to be food is now a 'product' killed by processing: mass produced with no regard to impact on humans or planet, factory-induced off flavours and grey hues dressed up with flavourings and colourings (Would you eat grey margarine? Of course you wouldn't.)
But there is no easy switch to flip on our all pervasive food system. So we have to do the work ourselves. To stop falling for the packaging and get back to the simple truths of plain real food right in front of us.
Have you noticed? An apple doesn't come with a 'healthy' label.
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PS. If you've had similar thoughts (over a phone screen or otherwise) but feel you need to 'get more organised' before you can choose to ignore packaged foods, check out my new workshop: it's all about making real food cooking as simple as possible - and it starts with your pantry.
Categories: : (RE)THINK
