Food for thoughts

What is food for? Why do we even eat? Can’t we just eat a spoon of some protein powder from a plastic bag with a futuristic design and call it a meal?

These are – I’m afraid – questions that all of us have gone, or will have to go through, at some point.

To save everyone so much trouble, the short answer is that yes, we could just scoop artificial powder-food down our throat, or gulp down some synthetic pills that make up for a whole meal’s nutritional intake, saving us time, effort of cooking, money and, the outermost outrageously annoying part, washing dishes.

“Unfortunately”, the answer is a bit longer and more elaborated than that. You see, it just so happens that food is not really only an end in itself, it’s a means to something else, something more important (and there is where the answer gets quirky) that goes beyond the mere fact of feeding ourselves (italics to give ominous vibe).

Imagine it this way: let’s take one of the several normalized daily addictions we have in this culture, like smoking. Me, an average smoker, I could either have two scenarios: one where I enjoy the whole process of looking forward to a cigarette, savoring it, then rolling it with some friends while sipping a coffee, asking for a filter to someone because I can’t find mines, then approaching a stranger for a lighter, starting up a conversation with this stranger, finding out we have so much in common, etc etc.

Or scenario nr. 2, I could just get a nicotine patch, slap it on my skin and wait for the nicotine release to kick on my neurotransmitters and get a dopamine release, exactly like an addict. End of the process: efficient, clean, surgical and result-oriented.

Now, smoking cigarettes it’s a good example here for the sake of the argument, but it’s no joke as there is people losing both health and money because of it, and I think the last thing those people need is to be made fun of, so if you know a smoker make sure to be next to them in their times of need. Anyhow, what cigarettes smokers do with their addiction is an analogy to how we relate to food: do we eat, or do we just feed ourselves? Do we live, or do we just exist? Do we smoke a cigarette, or we just stick a nicotine patch on our forehead?

I don’t know about you, but till now I’ve not seen so many people with nicotine patches, and even less on their foreheads.

So, what sort of a pattern is there? Let’s call it, to give it a shape, something like active or passive engagement with our actions and choices, and the difference between the first and the second has to do with intentionality (italics for suspense).

To make a blitz pop quiz, between eating and feeding ourselves, which action would we say has more intentionality? Exactly, eating. And that’s why we use, at least in some languages, the word “feeding” for animals: due to our speciesist culture, animals don’t eat, but they are fed, because we think they have no intentionality, no awareness and no active engagement with the action of eating. But worry not, this is not an antispeciesism vegan manifesto about the perception of non human forms of life as inferior (unless you want it to be), because the same way we say “have you fed the cat today” we also say “have you fed the baby today”, and that’s because we also consider an infant unaware, non-intentional and disengaged to their choices.

But enough of the linguistics! The question here is: are you eating, or are you just feeding yourself? To rephrase the same concept with the example from above: are you nourishing yourself with nice, healthy and meaningful food, or are you just eating to survive, might as well be with protein powder and food replacement pills worth a whole meal?

Some time ago the philosopher Robert Nozick came up with a thought experiment called the experience machine or pleasure machine, basically to disprove hedonism: simply put, the experiment argues that there is more to life than just pleasure, just enjoyment, just nicotine patches on the forehead and dry mouthfuls of protein powders (have not tried myself but they look pretty sandy to be honest). If we were to be hooked to some endless, not earned and not deserved source of pleasure we would fall into a state of meaninglessness and lack of purpose. Imagine if, for example, we were to have nicotine patches free, forever: we would overdose on them, but then what? What’s the point? I mean, how many can you even fit on your forehead?

The point being, that we “self-aware, intentional, beings” – as we like to call ourselves (raising eyebrows in disbelief) – need more than just fodder in a bowl or just nicotine patches on our forehead, that stuff is for animals (or toddlers), we need and want to be engaged, to be active part of what we are doing, to be actors/actresses and deciders, to feel like we deserve, earn and own the pleasure we get, and that's why we deeply need to be - or at least to feel - one with what we are doing, to feel like we are part of something bigger and therefore alive, real.

So, bringing this back to what it started from: food itself it's not worth much, yes it does prevent our tissues to rot and decay and our organism to decompose, but what I mean is that food it's not much worth in itself because it's just a bait, a catch, a juicy treat that natural selection has associated as a positive reinforcement in our dopamine reward system; food is something we aim at, and most of the benefits we get from it is through the process of reaching to it: planting it, growing it, harvesting it, preserving it, foraging it, transforming it, sharing it, exchanging it, caring for it, and yes - last in order and in importance - eating it.

And as it seems, most of these activities are community based and involve pro-social behaviors: help neighbors for the harvest, gather around and exchange goods, support each other in times of need or rely on shared infrastructures like a community mill; so now, from this tiny bit wider perspective, if we were to remove from the action of eating all of those “you scratch my back, I scratch your back”, shared behaviors that make up for the fabric of community, what would be left of the process of eating?

Yea, exactly that: sad, lame and dry spoonfuls of protein powder and lonely, artificial and individualistic precooked, ready to eat, microwave portions in a package to eat in front of a Netflix episode. And all of this because we mistakenly set our greedy eyes and drooping, watery mouths on the end result – i.e. food, the product itself – and not on the way it is produced; exactly as the saying goes: not seeing the forest for the trees. The act of eating, apparently so meaningless and insignificant, is in reality a political act, representative of our engagement and therefore the result of a series of intentional choices, such as: from whom do I buy food? How long and energy intensive was its production chain? Is it local and seasonal? Who do I share this food with? Is this what I’m eating worth its price?

And it’s from this state of engagement that will also come the solution to the current issue of not seeing the forest. The same way we traded pro-social behaviors of solidarity and community relationships in exchange for sad and lonely cups of instant noodles in front of a screen, we can trade it back. How? But well, the easiest way of them all: just being humans doing human things! Hang out with each other in a park, rather than separating ourselves with this technology; bake a bread and bring it to who lives next door to you; ask people for directions or information, rather than looking them up stuck in the middle of the sidewalk looking like a fool; take your earplugs out (also metaphorically speaking) and just interact with people in your commute, rather than doomscrolling; offer help to people without expecting anything in return, but just because. It can sound like weird things to do, but it might be just because we’re not used to them anymore, and you’ll be surprised by how easy it gets just to be human.

These are just a few examples but the list is very long, which is a good thing, because it means there is plenty of ways to change things for the better, you just have to start from somewhere.. so why not here and now?