One of the things that fascinates me most about food in our culture is the perception of what's 'good'. It seems to me so many folks quantify goodness in terms of what's expected, rather than what their vittles actually taste like, or consist of. The ease of manufactured food has completely skewed the perception of 'good'.- take 'diet' food, for example. I watch people eat the same 'low-fat' 'reduced-calorie' or 'low-carb' lunches every day. They insist that what they're eating is good.. But what exactly are they saying?
Is that diet frozen dinner delicious? Is it good for you at all? Are you even satisfied beyond the most basic level of sustinance once you've eaten it? That kind of thing, in my opinion, can only be 'good' in a relative sense.. It's 'better' for you than the regular packaged meal (although this is highly debateable), or McDonald's, or whatever- it's nourishing, sure, and it fulfills the basic need to fill one's belly, and it assauges the guilt of the typical American eater, but is it good? Does it make you happy?
I mean really, why drink a diet soda at all, rather than some water or an iced tea? Is it the illusion that you're treating yourself, whilst fostering the notion that you're somehow being 'good' by not fully indulging? It's an odd cycle of guilt (lust) and redemption through suffering (self-denial, one of the oldest tricks in the book). In a sense, I suppose, it is fulfilling. It makes one feel superior to those who can't say no to the sugar, the fat- the carbs, even... All the things that are 'bad'.
There are ways to get around that. We just need to forget some of our programming. When I was a starving student, I discovered that I could make my budget stretch a loooong ways by buying only fresh foods- fruits, vegetables, even grains like oatmeal and such in thier raw form- and making them into good, nourishing, and yummy (well, most of the time, I had my mishaps) food. It was necessity that turned me into the eater that I am today. $20 a week with the occasional expenditure for a value-sized pack of raw protein that would last me a month or more in the freezer (would have been cheaper to be a vegetarian, yeah), and I was eating better than many people I knew that were spending much more- though with a little more effort. After a while, I got good at cooking. I got good at eating, too. Habits are habits, after all, and once I found this one I couldn't go back to manufactured 'good'.
So what's my point?
I need for my mouth, my brain, my gut, and my soul to be happy. I need pure sensuality. I need a certain satisfaction, even, from knowing that I just had something real. (Yes, I'm still talking about food here, stay with me people). But if one isn't caught up in that cycle of consumerism and the manufactured (literally) ideal of what's 'good', then satisfaction can be much less complicated.
I'm not trying to preach.. Okay. I am. But it's a sermon of love.
