I have calmed down from yesterday's rant about dieting shortcuts.
I might even be singing a different tune. Well, slightly.
This evening was full of food conflict. I got home late. I wanted something healthy, mostly vegetables. However, I really really didn't want to cook. I wanted to read and meditate and write in my journal. I was in the mood for some higher level activities, some genuine spiritual evolution, not hours in the kitchen. Hm. Healthy fast food? No, I was too broke to hit up the Whole Foods salad bar or anything of that sort.
So, I sucked it up and spent an hour chopping and cooking. It wasn't enjoyable. I felt rushed. I just wanted to get it over with so I could do the things I wanted to do. I honestly felt that cooking tonight was holding me back somehow from pursuing much more important tasks. It felt primitive.
It got me thinking about what hunting and gathering must have been like for Homo sapiens living on the verge of the first Agricultural Revolution. Think about that for a second. Imagine being an upright walking hunter-gatherer with an ever increasing amount of brain function. You're cranial abilities call you to develop a written language, study the astrological calendar, build permanent dwellings, develop religions and civilizations... but you aren't quite there yet. Every member of your species still has to spend nearly every waking hour acquiring food like the rest of the animals. Imagine what it must have been like to live through any part of that slow Neolithic transition from nomadic to sedentary civilization.
While the transition was slow and complex, the development of agriculture was a huge part of man's evolution at this stage. It allowed for surplus time which led to specialization of labor and increasilying sophistocated societies, for one thing. At that point in time, "faster food" was a major asset to man's evolution.
Flash back to me in the kitchen. I'm chopping. I'm cutting. I'm 10 pounds overweight. I wish I was reading and increasing my brain power. I wish I was free to develop in more sophistocated ways. Faster food would have been a real asset to my personal evolution.
Am I in the middle of
another evolutionary food crossroads for humanity?
Gone are the days, in America at least, in which taking in enough calories to survive is a challenge. Instead, I am surrounded by cheap, fast, incredibly calorie dense foods. As a human trying to acquire food in 2009, I am faced with a perplexing situation. Food choices that match up with my animal instinct to maximize calories and keep the cost of acquiring those calories low are everywhere. As far as the primitive Homo sapien in me is concerned, McDonald's is a really good deal.
Lots of calories at a low cost.
"Bingo," says the primitive being inside of me.
That is when the evolved being inside of me speaks up. It brings my awareness to the fact that those calorie dense foods are actually harming my body. Unfortunately, as calorie dense food has become cheaper and easier to get, I have become more sedentary and need less and less of it to thrive. I don't hunt for a living anymore. I sit in a chair. Hopefully, my brain has developed enough to internalize that fact and respond with more self control. Hopefully, my brain is sophistocated enough to turn down the animal voice inside of me that wants more fats and sugars, and turn up the voice of higher brain functioning. Let's be honest, many Americans (myself included sometimes) feel stuck in that primitive place where we know what our bodies need and don't need, but we can't seem to intellectually overpower the physical cravings for harmful, calorie dense foods.
In my better moments I transcend the calorie craving animal inside of me and think even bigger. I tap into that part of myself that is really educated, that has even become mentally sophistocated enough to grasp the impact that my food acquisition methods have on the rest of my environment. If I am really on, I might move beyond the battle of self control to the desire to be a benevolent force in the universe, to make sure my food choices weren't contributing to pollution or the exploitation of other living creatures.
But lets face it, evolutionarily speaking, most Americans don't seem to be there yet. I know that I certainly don't always eat as a highly evolved human, and I write a blog about sustainable food access. That certainly says something, don't you think?
I admit it. I had a spoonful of Nutella with Peanut Butter before I wrote this post. The calorie craving animal in me took over, God damn it! I just couldn't be bothered thinking about the production of Nutella, and how much fossil fuel was spent shipping that vat of sugar and chemicals to their spot in front of me on the counter. All I could think about was the sweet flavor of Nutella on my tounge.
My spiritual evolution it still young and fragile, and it failed. Then my intellectual evolution failed. Then, finally, my self control also failed.
So, faced with the consequences of this all too common pattern of human behavior (Need I say it? An obesity epidemic, a collapsing health care system, an industrial agriculture system that is raping the pilaging the environment... yada yada yada...), what do we do?
Do we accept that self control and highly evolved eating habits are just beyond most of us right now and develop a mechanism to correct for this limitation? Humans are really good at recognizing our limitations and building tools to overcome them, after all. That is what separates us from most animal species.
I'm thinking futuristic, space-age food solutions here: an iPhone application (50 years from now, when iPhone technology has become as basic in America as running water) that measures exactly how many calories we need in a day given our activity level. The technological application communicates with our fridge, via USB cord maybe, and out pops a meal with the appropriate level of calories. This meal was produced in an incredibly efficient and sustainable way. All the veggies in the meal were grown on the roof of our home, for example.
In this futuristic world of carefully prescribed sustainable food solutions, we wouldn't have to have self control, and we wouldn't have to spend time on food. Ever. Instead, humans would spend time on spiritual evolution and intellectual growth. We'd invent things that helped our planet thrive in harmony with other species
and with other planets in the solar system. We'd be highly evolved creatures.
Not a bad sci-fi vision, if you ask me. The only problem is that in the above system, all of the sensuality is taken out of food preparation. Although, given the fact that
Americans spend about $1 billion on fast food every year, maybe that wouldn't bother most of the population that much after all.
Part of me screams,
"No! No! Don't take away cooking. Food production is an essential sensory human experience, like sex. It helps us connect with our most basic physical needs. It is essential to our awareness of our bodies!"But, then I wonder - did primitive man feel that way about hunting?
Andrew Henderson/The New York Times Using a food stamp card in Brooklyn.
Cutting pieces as you see above required only 2 cuts per zucchini rather than the 15-20 cuts required to cut the zucchini into even little circles. Major time saver!
Baked veggie casserole courtesy of a magazine she picked up while waiting for the bus. I'll report back once I make it.
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