You Want Me to Eat WHAT?

May I ask a simple question?  How is it that we are absolutely expected and encouraged to eat things that other less intelligent living things would never in their wildest dreams ever consider eating?  These things have nothing to do with food and are actually dangerous to our health.  They are required to store, ship, preserve, texturize, stabilize, de-foam, and artificially flavor our food (amongst other things).  These are solutions to the problems of our agricultural-industrial food complex which we are literally expected to swallow.  Whether we are aware of it or not, we do eat these things.  So, we are actually eating their problems at our own expense.  These companies and even our own governments are encouraging these practices while we increasingly get sick and die as a result of this modern diet.

We are supposed to eat this chemical garbage falsely portrayed as food about as much as we are supposed to eat carpet tacks and drink gasoline.  We don’t eat carpet tacks and we don’t drink gasoline.  Yet, the idea of doing so is no less absurd than eating the dangerous chemical additives and super concentrated fats and sugars which conveniently solve the problems of the our modern food industry (including that pesky little problem of making us eat more of this crap so they can make more money).  So, to keep foods low in cost, addictive, seemingly fresh, storable, cheaper to ship, and to get rid of industrial problems like the ingredients “separating” or “foaming” dangerous inedible chemicals are put into them along with huge, dense quantities of fats and sugars.

Who pays the physical price for eating this crap?  We do.  Who is threatened with obesity, illness, chronic disease and death – we are.  Wow, what a great deal for us?  On the other hand, the food industry is more than happy to accommodate our eating anywhere and at anytime – cars are a great example.  Meals are designed increasingly to eat “on the go”.  This is especially true regarding their packaging and hyper-convenient distribution.  This exploitation of our ever faster paced lives seems to be a vulnerability which is easily taken advantage of.  If it is fast and convenient and portable – you can be almost assured it is equally highly processed food.
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Back to the absurdity of eating carpet tacks.  Based on the logic of our current system, if we did eat these things we would be diagnosed with some new malady appropriately named “Gastro Intestinal Carpet-tachitis” by our medical geniuses and the drug industry.  There would no doubt be a new drug treatment for it and of course, surgery.  But one thing is for sure we would never stop eating the carpet tacks for that would be completely unacceptable!  What absolute bloody insanity!

I submit to you that the North American experience with food is not much different than its twisted treatment of sexuality.  Two impossible, dangerous and extreme illusions of reality are simultaneously thrust upon our society preventing people from taking the natural and healthy course somewhere in the middle ground.  Take sexuality – we are obsessed with extremes of religious protocol, denial and probity yet we insist on being absolutely immersed in a pool of sexuality – movies, television, music, magazines, clothing, and lifestyle.  Our culture absolutely drips with the most lascivious forms of sex.  The term “Pornography” may be used almost interchangeably when discussing either sex or our food.  We are relentlessly pushed at every turn to consume both.

We are inexorably reminded of impossible standards of the perfect body; body builders, the fitness culture, models and celebrities.  How do we get there?  Again – work, discipline and denial.  Simultaneously, we are surrounded by Twinkies, candy, chocolate, fast food, alcohol and other assorted processed crap.  Go into almost any store or gas station and look at the impossible standards glaring out in glossy detail on the magazine racks.  Perfect bodies, bikinis, rippled abdominals, celebrities, and models.  Now look to your left or right to the racks of irresistible and addictive snack food, candy, processed cakes, and assorted other junk all fighting for eye level position.  This tug of war is everywhere and absolutely inescapable.

Again, like sexuality the two unrealistic and impossible extremes are inextricably linked and intertwined into one bizarre fabric.  “I’ll take some Imodium with my laxatives please, could I please have a glass of oil and water?  Yup, give me one pound of fundamentalist Christianity and umm…let’s see throw in 16 oz of satanism.   So, we ricochet wildly and uncontrollably between these two impossible extremes.  We never stop to think that neither is sustainable or really attainable for that matter, especially in the exaggerated, grotesque and freakish form they are presented to us (have you seen a professional bodybuilding contest lately?!?).

Why are we caught in this way?  I believe it is because of the gravitational pull they both exert on us.  We seem to be stuck modulating between these extremes in a states of mass confusion, guilt and failure.  At the same time these two opposing camps just become greater and more dangerous hyperboles of reality which distract and prevent us from reaching our goals.  In a symbiotic game of one-up-man-ship, one extreme inadvertently strengthens the other.  What we need to do is break free from this ridiculous illusory trap and move forward.  It’s no wonder many Europeans laugh at Westerners, scratching their heads in amazement at our bizarre, self destructive behavior.