Here is a quick experiment: If I
say the word “food,” what are the first images that come to mind? You are
probably imagining your favorite dish first of all, and beyond that probably a
variety of dishes, complete meals like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, or
maybe just a single food item, like an apple or piece of chicken. The most
likely scenario is that when you read the word “food,” a rush of the things you
have eaten in your life all came pouring out of nowhere and it took you a few
instants to even pick out one item or dish in particular. Now, this is a bit of
a stretch, but imagine you are a cow. Assuming there is some kind of bovine
language that you could understand, another cow mentions that they are hungry
and they want food. The first image that instantly comes to mind is grass.
Grass and more grass. I know there are various kinds of grass and similar
greens that cows can eat, but if you have to put one image to it, it is that of
a short, green plant growing in clumps coming out of the ground. The comparison
of these two points of view, that of a human and a cow, seem silly at first
until you realize that nearly countless types of human food and grass for cows
serve exactly the same purpose on their most basic level. That purpose (the
main reason why) we eat is for sustenance, the homeostasis of the body’s cells
to maintain life and function accordingly. Why then has the human appetite
evolved and developed so much more than that of a cow so that we are constantly
obsessing over our every bite?
Robert
Keeling put it more succinctly than in all likelihood I could have in his 2001
article: “the relationship between food and life is
that direct, that simple: people die without it.” Food is just the gas in a car
or the battery in a TV remote. But if there is one thing that I have learned
over the past few month especially, not much beats food in the race to the
forefront of peoples’ minds. We have looked at such a wide variety of examples
where food has played an important role in peoples’ lives and their development
and realization of who they are. I don’t think a cow feels any particular affinity
to food beyond eating and digesting it. Our obsession with flavors and
arbitrary determinations of quality have created a society of picky eaters, and
food snobs. Some people travel for the sole purpose of eating at a restaurant
they heard about in a magazine or even on TV, I’m not sure a cow would even
turn its head any further to one direction to taste and see if one weed tasted
better than the other.
The point I am trying to make is a
bit of a complicated one. While I recognize that food has a very important role
in our lives and culture, and that it affects on levels beyond just taste and
the good feeling it leaves in our stomach, I think that people get carried away
in their eating to the point of idolizing food and giving it too high of a
position in society. Looking at food from a sustenance-based perspective, food
has a role to play, but not a hole to fill. The relationship between people and
their food takes up a large part of the psychological field of study, and quite
frequently it is found that food becomes either a cause of stress or a means of
alleviating stress, neither of which ends well for the person suffering because
of the food, physically or emotionally (Canetti et all). Hundreds and maybe
thousands of studies have been conducted on the effects of food on the human
psyche, ranging from how certain foods are eaten depending on whether or not
someone is happy or sad, or if the physical process of eating can alleviate
stress, or whether eating alone or in a group can contribute to obesity, or
even whether snacking right before bed is more likely to cause nightmares
(Canetti et al)! We can even see (though a lighthearted example) how the
present company or romantic interest can subconsciously (or consciously) affect
our eating decisions (Korb). While some might claim that these kinds of
conditions only affect those with pre-existing mental conditions, I think that
the mentality that Americans in particular have today has put food into the
role of a crutch for people with emotional problems in the first place. With
the cow as a sort of standard for the perception of food, I think people are
just overthinking their eating habits.
We have been eating as long as
humans have been alive. This in and of itself is a redundant statement, but the
way we have been eating and our thinking about that process has evolved even
more over time than we have (Atkins). Atkins describes how bread, for example,
has developed a bit over the last 200 years or so, but the way we eat it and
buy it has changed far more than the lonely loaf itself. Bakers baked bread,
and mothers baked bread. That bread was round, and usually small enough to be
eaten whole or torn up with hands and passed around the table. Butter was
somewhat rare unless you were wealthy or had some access to dairy animals (here
is the cow again), so it was usually eaten plain. Nowadays, bread is full of
chemicals and cooked in uniform rectangles that are sliced at the factory (not
bakery) then sliced into yet more uniform sections. Sometime between the round
loafs and now, someone decided that they could stick some other type of food in
between two chunks of bread, and now in the 21st century that is
what we do with the majority of the bread we buy from the grocery in slim
plastic bags (Atkins). Maybe if it is in the morning we slide some Margerine®
over it was lightly cooked again (no cows harmed in this application).
Possibly the most blatant
manifestation of our obsession with food is what see in the media, in
commercials and on billboards and on the packaging of the food itself.
Commercials for fast food, beverages, and other food products make up a large
portion of the advertising on TV and product placement in movies and TV shows
(McBride). Up until about 100 years ago, it was good enough to see food in the
storefront. Then someone came up with the idea that they could sell more food
if the had people thinking about food when it was out of reach, longing for it
so it tasted that much better the next time they saw it (Atkins). If they saw a
tall bottle of soda on a billboard, the bottle of water in their hand that was
actually the healthier option just wasn’t going to cut it anymore (McBride).
Somewhat related to the subject of
advertising, the actual makeup of food might tell us the most about its role in
our lives as well. Like seeing the food in the storefront, we knew food by one
or two things. Bread was cooked, and made of wheat and some other things. Meat
obviously was from an animal (like a cow) but you couldn’t see anything else in
it. Fruits and vegetables came from trees or out of the ground, and you knew
they were good for you but not exactly sure why. When scientists started looking
into the makeup of the food we ate, they were able to distinguish things like
protein, carbohydrates, sugars, vitamins, fats et cetera. Eventually, further
researched showed that some of these were good for you and some bad for you,
which is valuable information to have when balancing them in a healthy diet
(Atkins). Once the basics were established, though, it seemed as if scientists
were constantly flip-flopping between what was good and what was bad, and the
media was saying one thing and scientists were saying another and celebrities
were supporting this or that diet and it all became one mess. The one thing
that everyone seemed to forget or ignore is that there really are very few
things that are truly bad for you in even the smallest amount; nearly
everything that can be found in food has some purpose and positive effect on
our bodies, they are good in small amounts relative to each other. The only
problem is that our consumerist and gluttony driven appetites ignore the idea
of small amounts so the smallest size people will consider is just enough to
cause them harm over time.
Perhaps I am not the best person to
be making broad statements about how people are overvaluing food and spending
their time idolizing food and eating far too much of it. I have never been a
big eater, and doubt I will be in the future far or near. I can appreciate good
food and have developed what I consider to be a good taste for it over my
lifetime, but my meager-at-best appetite has kept me quite honestly behind
everyone I eat with, particularly in quantity. My dad loves food (no doubt his
Italian heritage plays a role in this) but my mother and her mother and family
had a very “no-nonsense, eat healthy with no frills” approach to eating and
food in general. As my mother was the primary cook during my childhood, I’m
sure I got this from her, although my sister became much more of a passionate
foodie like my father.
I think there was one time period in
particular that solidified my views on food as just a fuel for our bodies. When
I was a sophomore in high school, I was diagnosed very suddenly with Leukemia,
a cancer of the bone marrow. I am skipping over many details, but the
treatments at one point made me lose as much as 30 pounds over a 2-week period,
and if I were to lose just 3 more pounds I would be put on a feeding tube that
went through my nose and all the way into my stomach. My diet would consist of
a brown liquid from a bag, which even by my low standards for food was not
particularly appetizing. My only other choice, then, was to summon all of my
strength and with the help of my parents and a dietician, start an eating regimen
that could pack on as much protein and carbohydrates without overwhelming my
system as possible. Needless to say it was a lot of hard work, but I was slowly
able to gain back the weight but did not reach a healthy weight until after my
treatment was finished a few years later.
It may seem like it, but I don’t think this period quite
ruined food or eating for me, but it made me realize how simple but necessary
eating is to us as human beings. I still have my favorite foods, I love going
out to eat, and there are certainly meals and restaurants that are filled with
familiar associations and memories, but as we have seen time and time again, it
is the people around us that are really making the memories, the food just
provides a warm meal and something to do with our hands while we are laughing,
sharing stories and learning about each other with our friends (Holaday). Food
can indeed bring us together at a dining room table with our family or a dining
hall table with new college friends (Keeling), but the food itself is just a
medium for conversation.
I have compared our eating to the eating of cows probably
far more than I should have, but here is one last thought though it deviates
from the rest. Cows eat because they don’t have much else to do. Humans eat to
allow us to do the many other things we enjoy doing. Let’s not get caught up in
our eating, we have so much more to do! We are blessed to have limitless
options with our food, but in the end it is still just energy for our bodies.
Enjoy every bite; the cow seems to be, too.
Keeling, Richard. “Food: Sustenance and Symbol.” Journal of American College Health 49.4
(2001): 153-156. Web.
Santich, Barbara. “Food and Drink: The Sustenance of Life.” Issues 72 (2005): 4-5. Web.
Holaday, Susan. “More Than Sustenance.” Foodservice Director 22.7 (2009): 26-28. Web.
Atkins, Peter. “The Material Qualities of Food Quality And
Composition.” Endeavour 35.2-3
(2001): 74-79. Web.
Korb, Scott. “Having What She’s Having.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food And
Culture 7.2 (2003): 83-89. Web.
Canetti, Laura, Eytan Bachar and
Elliot Berry. “Food and Emotion.” Behavioral
Processes 60.2 (2002): 157-164. Web.
McBride, Anne. “Food Porn.” Gastronomica: The Journal Of Food and
Culture 10.1 (2010): 38-46. Web.
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