We like to talk about eating as if we are in control of it.
And for good reason. I choose which ingredients to buy, which recipe to cook, and when to eat it.
But, in my experience, eating isn’t always necessarily an intentional, conscious choice. Sometimes I do it absentmindedly, sometimes I eat something I don’t really want to eat because I am hungry and it’s my only option. Lots of people made a lot of choices before I found a recipe and went, list in hand, to the store.
And it isn’t just my direct experience of eating that makes me question whether I’m the one calling the shots when I “decide” to eat one food over another. For me, the act of eating blurs the subject-object relationship that I normally assume exists between me and my dinner.
Let’s say I eat an apple. Once I’ve taken a bite, broken it’s skin and swallowed, haven’t I, in a sense, become the apple? And isn’t the apple sort of…me? How do we distinguish between the substance in my stomach, which will soon be processed and assimilated into my body from “me”? And whose to say the apple didn’t (in its own way) want to be eaten?
I like to talk about eating because it requires that I imagine the myriad ways in which I am connected to the world around me and all of the creatures that inhabit it. There are various strings that flow between me and my apple; we depend upon each other. These strings wrap around my fingers as I break off the stem, grip the paring knife, and slice into the apple’s flesh. They extend outward the bees who pollinated the blooms, to the soil in which it grew, and to the people who harvested it. And then they go further still. These strings go onwards to touch people and places and moments I can’t even imagine.
As I eat and ponder, as the apple and I are forced to reckon with our interdependence, it becomes harder to shrug off my relationship to the world around me. It seems silly to say that after having eaten lunch, I am an entirely new person. At the same time, it is impossible to ignore that yes, something has changed since I took my first bite, both about me and about the world.
I planted a garden this last year, small and poorly managed, but a garden nonetheless. One day, Josef and I were able to harvest a little arugula. The leaves were bitter and green and exciting. I remember Josef pointing out how obvious it seemed to him that the arugula and us were made of the same stuff. That he could pull the wiggly leaves from the earth, crush them joyfully between his teeth, and continue on with a little more energy seemed simply amazing that we are able to accept something “Other” inside of us, to be designed such that we can metabolize other beings, and even that our care had permitted the arugula’s growth–there in the soil, at the top of a hill, in a land otherwise permeated by drought.… How can we go on eating without acknowledging all of that?
In Western philosophy, as many probably already know, there is a big difference between the body and the brain and this difference is where we glean our esteemed position atop the world hierarchy. It’s why we get to burn down forests and pollute oceans. It’s why we get to look at the strings, scoff at how delicate they all seem, and fly food from the other side of the planet right into our mouths. It might even be why we pay people who allegedly work with their heads more than we pay people who allegedly work with their hands. It’s why we get to stand around arguing about buying processed foods versus growing our own peas. And it’s also, potentially, not true.
My body needs to be fed. What my brain wants is informed by that need, and a million other factors. When I’m full, food doesn’t taste as good. When I’m hungry, nearly anything will do. The brain hasn’t exactly come out on top here - I’m not even sure it makes sense to distinguish the two like this. They are one and the same, in so many ways.
The table, the plate, the cutting board are good starting points for exploration, for questions. When I bring bite of roasted beet and avocado to my mouth, I can start to ask how it got here on my plate. I can imagine the people who made it possible. I may even be able to start wondering why it is that I think beets and avocado are ethically good things to eat and examine if that really is true.
Food is something that can bring people together, and it can also tear them apart. What we eat or choose not to eat is a controversial matter, because it says something about what types of people we are. It means something about me to be a practicing vegan, just as it does to be someone who selects processed food at the supermarket rather than Nantes carrots at the farmer’s market in Berkeley. It means something because of those strings I mentioned.
The strings are unavoidable and always present. They tangle together and branch off in new directions and become a whole part of the world in and of themselves. But that does not mean we ought to take them for granted, that we can shrug off responsibility just because we don’t control where the strings come from or go to. In fact our lack of control is the very reason why we ought to come to our food with intention, care and respectful regard. We ought to be humble in the face of something much larger than ourselves.
Eating is an invitation to reflect on the ways in which I engage with a system that precedes me and will last long after me. It’s a reminder, that if I can so easily become an apple, maybe I ought to care a little more about the type of life that apple leads. And for that matter, the way the person who planted the apple is treated. And whether those who harvested it can afford to eat it, too. If for no other reason than I am that apple and I want to live a good life.
I like talking about food because boundaries start to disappear; my vision starts to widen and blur.
More on that next Friday.
Until then, Clea