Saturday, January 29, 2011

Food and Other Causes

I've had a strange relationship with food and my weight for my entire life. I was a chubby kid that wore pretty plus sizes. The one who had a Janet Jackson-esque wardrobe malfunction in a yellow tutu at the age of 6, effectively ending my budding chubby ballerina career. There was a point in my life when I was actually thin, but I still thought I was fat, and by the time I realized I was thin, I was fat again.

Come high school I wore a mother of the bride's dress to my prom and though I evaded the freshman fifteen, I succumbed to the third year thirty. It did not help that I was MVE (Most Valuable Eater) on my college soccer team. Some people got off the bench. I got in the cafeteria line, even going so far as getting cut off one day in the cafeteria line after consuming 13 cheesesteaks. When I returned to the table that day, my friends asked, "Where's your [14th] cheesesteak?"

"I got cut off, " I replied.
"That's amazing, " my friend John said.
"Why?" I queried.
"You made the cafeteria lady care."

And that was my first experience with eating as a social cause.

When I was in medical school, I ran into an old friend from college who asked me to dinner. And two weeks later, we were sitting in a sushi place in Tribeca called Nobu, dining on the omakase, and changing my life forever.

From then on I vowed to myself that I would only eat food that I loved and would not eat for subsistence. But alas, without the skills to cook anything but Spaghettios nor the wallet to buy anything more than one of the X-Large pizza slices that Hoboken is known for, I did not make good on my promise.

These days eating seems more complicated then ever. Do you eat local? Hyperlocal? Regional? Foreign? Are you vegetarian? Vegan? Pescatarian? Lacto-ovo-uh-oh-tarian? Are you steak only? Pork only? Kosher? Glatt kosher? Halal? Do you buy hormone free? Antibiotic free? Non-GMO? Monsanto? Do you eat for yourself? For the environment? For survival only? Do you cook? Order in? Go out? Drive through? Perhaps forage? Farm? Cultivate? Whole Food? Will that be Braised? Broiled? Raw? Super-sized?

You get my point. These days every bite matters. Every meal is a political, social, environmental, and health statement. For my own part, the most common question I get from cancer patients is, "What should I eat?" And though some suggestions can be made, the overwhelming evidence suggests that it is not what you eat once you are diagnosed, it is what you should have been eating for the last 50-odd years of your life.

And on this, day, when I am about 10 pounds above my happy weight and 20 pounds above my dream weight, and I'm toying with pragmatic pescatarianism and more time spent at the gym and Greenmarket, I still can't help but eat for the simple joy of the food, meal and the company. And if, along the way, you can make the world a little better, a farmer a little richer and the cafeteria lady care... well all the better.

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