Thought For Food

Food has no educational value, no sex appeal, no ethical significance, and very little connection with underwear. Like us, it just sits there, waiting to be consumed by something greater than itself. The Great Alimentary Canal is part of the Universal Chain of Being, Nature’s Grand Design for recycling everything.

But what would Food be without Ingestion – a process which has been going on since ancient times, without much discernable progress? True, we now have Professors of Nutrition, plus all kinds of off-beat gurus with special diets and culinary creeds – but have you noticed that they too suffer malfunctions, including those extremely debilitating indispositions called Getting Old and Kicking the Bucket?

Nevertheless, food continues to be produced, bought, and sold, and in many circumstances, made quite a fuss about. There are Food Fairs, Food Fights, Hunger Strikes, Soup Kitchens, Food Pyramids, and numerous shrines devoted to Fast Food. Much less reverence is shown to Slow Food, although in certain cultures the snail remains a delicacy. Then there is that unique place called Home, which is sure to have some kind of facilities for the preparation of food prior to its insertion into the bodies of the denizens.

This brings us to the practice called “Eating,” than which (were its actual existence not a well-known fact) it would be hard to imagine a system more bizarre. What sane person could conceive of so grotesque a process, with intake involving one hole in the body – otherwise more properly used for communication – and the expulsion of waste, both liquid and solid, relegated to other distant apertures, often associated with both hygiene and hijinks.

The actual substances which, in one form or another, can be eaten to support life, are all themselves forms of life. Yes, you read me correctly. Under this current biological regimen, life feeds almost exclusively on other life. And there is no escaping it. Even the most extreme gastronomical conscientious objectors, such as those known as Vegetarians or Vegans, cannot avoid all the guilt implicit in the maintenance of a functioning human frame. Quite apart from the visible world – in which such dissenters attempt to rationalize their compunctions by distinguishing between beings which are “sentient,” i.e. capable of feeling pain, and others further down on the neuro-totem pole (though who is to say whether plants have feelings?) – at the microscopic level, within our own bodies, life-and-death battles are ceaselessly going on between and among a multitude of micro-organisms, over which we have no control.

To me personally, the sources of food are also of great importance. Knowing little of farms, dairies, and plantations, and not being a religious person, I reverently look upon my own chief source – our local supermarket – as my cathedral. There, along aisles lined with edibles, most of the offerings are concealed within carefully-designed packages – most of which, however, having yielded their contents, go on to a second life as a major ingredient of our collectable garbage – to say nothing of the carelessly cast-off portion, fated (as a sacrifice?) to litter our city streets.

But let worshipful tribute be paid here to the Food Saints who have given us such miracles as spreadable butter, zip-lock bags, seedless grapes, mashed potatoes in a box, market baskets on wheels, and of course, that Holy of Holies: Sliced Bread.

Nor must I fail to mention the foods which have sustained my own spirits through the most trying times – peanut butter, marmalade, and chocolate.

I started eating at a very early age – a time which, so to speak, will always be among my dearest mammaries. When I was old enough to go to schools where lunches were served, my mother never trusted the amount I was given, and so always provided me with extra sandwiches and sweets in a little cloth bag, which we called my “Supplementary.” The result was an intermittent but life-long problem of weight-control. Of course, I knew I was hardly alone in this struggle, but I was never quite ready to join Mothers Against Over-Eating, or whatever such groups were called.

But eaters, of whatever stripe, are thinkers too. And, when it came to writing epigrams, I found I had a ready market for food-related thoughts, especially if they had a philosophical twist, such as:

“Instead of Past, Present, and Future, I’d prefer Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry,” or: “Behind the big questions, like: What is life? are other important questions, like: What is for dinner?”