The questions I always return to when addressing any issue with food or nutrition is, What nourishes? What is it that truly feeds us and provides the satisfaction we seek? We believe that good nutrition nourishes us, and it does, yet it is easy to lose sight of all that nourishes and focus on nutrition alone. There is a wonderful scene in Woody Allen’s movie Sleeper where he wakes up after two centuries of suspended animation. The scientists who have brought him out of this long sleep explain his plight, and one of the first questions he asks is, “Where are all my friends?” He is told that his friends are dead, to which he replies with his classic forlorn and quizzical look, “I don’t understand it; they all ate organic rice.”
The question of what nourishes is often difficult to answer because our dietary notions change constantly. What we thought was good to eat yesterday is not always what we think is good today. Since colonial times people have believed that red meat was the king of foods. It made you strong and healthy and was even better for you than the most commonly consumed and well-loved staple—pork. Since the late 1960s this trend has completely reversed. Red meat and pork are no longer considered staples, but foods to eat occasionally. In fact, most other foods once considered the center of a healthy diet—whole milk, eggs, butter, cheese, and potatoes—are now under attack in some scientific circles, while foods such as oat bran, which previously fed our farm animals, are now seen as the edibles of choice. As one senior citizen remarked, “First I learned to eat lots of meat and eggs because they made you healthy, then I learned you shouldn’t eat them because they made you sick, but you should eat fish instead; then I learned you shouldn’t eat fish because of toxic metals in fish fat, and now I’m told to take a fish liver oil supplement—fish fat—because it lowers your cholesterol.”
Most nutritional assertions that originate from authoritative sources have a brief shelf life. Our nutritional information is not based on what is ultimately good to eat, but what we believe is good to eat at the time. Within this unstable state of affairs, one thing does remain constant—the connection between our relationship to food and our inner world. How we eat is a reflection of how we live. Our hurrying through life is reflected in hurrying through meals. Our fear of emotional emptiness is seen in our overeating. Our need for certainty and control is mirrored in strict dietary rules. Our looking for love in all the wrong places is symbolized in our use of food as a substitute for love.
The more we are aware of these connections, the greater the potential for our personal unfolding and inner satisfaction. For in changing the way we eat, we change the way we live. By focusing attention while eating, we learn to focus attention in any situation. By enjoying food, we begin to enjoy nourishment in all its forms. By loosening dietary restrictions, we learn to open up to life. By accepting our body as it is, we learn to love ourselves for who we are. And by eating with dignity, we learn to live with dignity.
Imagine for a moment all the different diets you have ever followed—the foods you ate as a newborn, a small child, a youth, a young adult, and on through the rest of your life. Who were these eaters? Where did they come from? Where did they go? What precipitates the change from one diet to the next? What will you be eating a year from now? Ten years from now?
I recall with a sense of awe my father lying in a hospital bed with tubes entering his nose, his mouth, and the veins in his arms, providing him with his only source of nourishment. Here was a human being, who fifty-eight years earlier had been born in a hospital with a feeding tube running from his mother to his belly, and now he was once more lying helplessly in a hospital. For all the diets he had ever followed, for all the bottles of vitamins, bagels and cream cheese with butter, and macrobiotic meals he had ever eaten, he was now, in some strange unearthly way, back where he had started.
What nourished him in his lifetime? What foods were good for him? Did he absorb the nutrients he needed? Did he accumulate too many toxins? Would the right diet have saved him? Perhaps he ate too much meat. Too much cholesterol. Too much salt. Not enough calcium. Not enough fiber …
When the body no longer flourishes, a new reality is seen, one that urges us forward into the unknown and backward to look upon what has been, to ask the question that may never have passed our lips, What nourishes?
We now understand that nourishment is not only nutrition. It is the experience of that nutrition—the heartiness, the sentiments, and the soul intention on which our eating is based. What nourishes is our relationship to food, our participation in the ongoing exploration of eating, the wonder, the joy, the confusion, the change, the uncertainty, the pain, the aliveness, the theories, the disputes, the shopping, the cooking, the sharing, the ripe watermelon, the overcooked spaghetti, the healthy foods, the forbidden sweets, and the knowing that when a meal is finished, we will return for another and another and another.
Whether it is the eternal round of the seasons, the sun, the stars in the night sky, or the hunger in our body, we continually end up where we began, finding ourselves at similar crossroads and often with similar opportunities. At any moment we may begin life anew. Begin your relationship to food now. Rather than wait for a time that may never arrive to embrace all that nourishes, embrace it now.
Everyone eats, but how many of us have understood what it means to be an eater? Whether you know it or not, each time you eat you secretly make a commitment to continue to live.
And though we make this life-affirming choice whenever we eat, it often arises from a heart that is fearful, uncertain, and at times turned against itself. We fear our natural cravings and desires, search for perfection in health or body weight when it can never be found, and live in fear of failing at the impossible standards we set. We surround the eating process with our rules rather than accepting it as it is.
Agreeing to be an eater means a conscious, deliberate, ritualistic, and hopefully liberating choice. Birth itself was our original agreement to be an eater. It seems reasonable to believe that sometime early in our career, we agreed to be here, to wear diapers, learn finger painting, take spelling tests, have a sex drive, find a good-paying job, and ultimately to exit this world on the same round-trip ticket we arrived with. And in doing so, we agreed to the necessity of being an eater.
It is time to renew the agreement, to reacquaint ourselves with its terms, and to integrate it into our lifetime of eating experience. If we choose to live, we must choose to eat, and if we choose to eat, why not accept the reality of all that it means to be an eater if happiness and peace of mind are our ultimate goals? Here is a restatement of the original promise that we made long ago.
I hereby agree, from this day forward, to fully participate in life on earth. I agree to inhabit the appropriate vehicle for such participation—a body. As a requisite for the sustaining of that body, and of the life that dwells therein, I agree to be an eater. This agreement fully binds me for the duration of my stay on earth.
As an eater, I agree to hunger. I agree to have a body that needs food. I agree to eat food. I recognize that as the biological need to eat is fulfilled with greater awareness and efficiency, the benefits of my well-being will increase. I further acknowledge that ignorance of the eating process may cause undesirable consequences.
Because the essence of my participation in life is one of learning and exploration, I agree to experience uncertainty as an eater. I recognize there are a great variety of foods to choose from, and I may not know which to eat. I may have a choice of different nutritional approaches, and not know which to follow. I may have an assortment of habits, and not know how to manage them. I recognize that my relationship to food is a learning process, and I will inevitably make mistakes. Therefore, as an eater, I agree to accept my humanness and learn as I go along.
I acknowledge that as the body changes from infancy to old age, so will the eating process change. I recognize that my body may call for different foods as the days, seasons, and years progress. My dietary needs will also shift in accord with changes in my life-style and environment. I understand that there is no one perfect diet.
As an eater, I accept pain. I recognize that I may suffer pain when the body is disturbed by my choice of food or eating habits. I may also experience pain when emotional and spiritual hungers are confused with physical hunger. I further understand that eating to cure a pain that cannot be remedied by eating may bring even more pain.
I further agree to accept a body that is imperfect and vulnerable, that naturally decays with the passage of time. I recognize there will be moments when I am incapable of caring for it myself. I agree, then, that to live in a body is to need the help of others. I also agree to be vulnerable as an eater. I acknowledge that I will be helpless as an infant and will need to be fed. I may be equally helpless when I am old and unwell. I further recognize that even when I am fully capable, I may still need the warmth and care of someone who can feed me. Therefore, as an eater, I agree to be nourished by others.
If I have a woman’s body, I acknowledge that I have a special relationship to eating and nourishment. I recognize that as a giver of life, I am the nourisher of life as well. Whether through my cooking or the milk of my body, I acknowledge that the union of food and love is a quality that marks my womanhood and has a profound effect on human-kind.
As an eater, I acknowledge the domain of the sacred. I recognize that the act of eating may be ritualized and inspired. It may be given symbolic meanings that are religious or spiritual in nature. It may even be joyous.
I further agree that eating is an activity that joins me with all humanity. I recognize that to be an eater is to be accountable for the care of the earth and its resources. I acknowledge that despite our differences, we are all ultimately nourished by the same source. As such, I agree to share.
I recognize that at its deepest level eating is an affirmation of life. Each time I eat I agree somewhere inside to continue life on earth. I acknowledge that this choice to eat is a fundamental act of love and nourishment, a true celebration of my existence. As a human being on earth, I agree to be an eater. I choose life again and again and again.…