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September 05 So You Think You Can Eat?No I'm not pitching a new reality TV show about competitive eating. I got the idea for this post after watching the movie "Julie and Julia ". But this post isn't about the movie -- although it's a fantastic movie I'd recommend with all my heart, not the least because every screen minute with Meryl Streep (as Julia Child) and Stanley Tucci (as her husband, Paul) together is such a delight and privilege to watch -- but it is because seeing Julia Child's immense, dynamite, larger-than-life passion for food totally amazed me because I've been losing interest in food over the past months. That may sound like an insane statement, but my behavior is solidly rational, to the extent that a cost-benefit analysis is rational: while I certainly derive pleasure from eating good food, such benefit usually pales in comparison with the cost of shopping for food, preparing it, cooking it, and cleaning up the inevitable mess. Such benefit is often even outweighed by the inconvenience of having to pick up a restaurant take-out. What I mean by cost is, of course, opportunity cost. Granted that I am not single-handedly resuscitating the U.S. health care system or playing beer pong with the Obamas at Martha's Vineyard, I do feel that I could dedicate the food-prep time to more productive pursuits, such as working, reading a good book, star-gazing, bubble-bathing, sleep-walking, or wasting a perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Not that I haven't tried. A couple of weeks ago I made a great discovery in my local grocery store. A line of frozen entrees called Ethnic Gourmet. Absolutely fabulous stuff with such varieties as Chicken Biryani, Chicken Tandoori with Spinach, and Pad Thai with Tofu. You just take the packet out of the freezer, throw it in the microwave (and imagine that an Indian or Thai chef lives there with the sole life purpose of pleasing you), and five minutes later you have your exotic tasty dinner! The only problem with this whimsical mini-chef is that, after a few days, my body felt loaded with salt that I was thinking of changing my name to Morton. So I have since reverted to the tried-and-true routine of eating whatever is left in the kitchen cabinet and making occasional minimum-effort concoctions such as "scrambled eggs with silken tofu and sweet peas". While I'm perfectly happy and content to stay this way forever -- or at least until I feel like changing my mind, or physiologically impossible, whichever comes first -- it got me thinking about something more profound, which is the evolutionary perverseness of treating eating as a nuisance. How could the genes associated with it have survived the harsh eon of natural selection? Or, if you don't believe in evolution, as the rest of the 81% of the Americans, such disposition still shall not exist if God had practiced Six Sigma quality control. Someone who ever possessed such a trait should have been eliminated for the betterment of the human race, together with someone who still gets lost in her office building after three years, or someone who could not parallel-park between two cars and gave up the spot, which was immediately and disdainfully occupied by a pickup truck, or someone who spends more time searching for her cell phone than actually using it (Apple's next blockbuster release? iStrap. A device that straps your iPhone to your body 24/7. Literally.) Such people should be theoretically extinct from an evolutionary viewpoint-- especially when they are the same person. Oh isn't life a miracle? So far there are only a couple of minor unforeseen consequences of my voluntary food embargo. The first one is that I might have lost a few pounds. And friends and colleagues are all "Poor Jackie, have you been losing weight?" "Not by choice at least. Well you know I've been training for the New York Marathon," I would reply to everyone who asks. Except my boss, to whom I would say, "Oh. I'm fine, Paul. Just too much work lately." But the kind people of Upper Valley wouldn't just let me be. Suddenly my email box is filled with all kinds of invitations to lunches and dinners, at which the desserts are always strategically positioned so no one could reach them but me. Maybe it's all in my wild imagination. But you can never be sure how the subconscious operates. And this invitation card sitting on my desk to a "pig roast church fundraiser" this Saturday is certainly real. And how could I ever conjure up such a thing as a "pig roast church fundraiser"? The second consequence, which I didn't realize until I read a paper recently, is based on the well-documented phenomenon that people who go into a grocery store when hungry tend to buy more. And the effect goes beyond food. Some kind of overcompensatory mechanism for sensory deprivation. This might explain why I've bought so much stuff lately. For most people living alone, the delight of going home after work every day is defined by the sight of your dog faithfully waiting by the front door and then going all gaga over you as if you were the Pope or the Dalai Lama. For me, it's the sweet sight of that perfectly packed, UPS-delivered corrugated cardboard package from Neiman Marcus quietly waiting for me on the front porch. No, my friends, as of now, I don't accept unsolicited advice or donated food. You can redirect your canned food to the local homeless shelter. As for the unsolicited advice, start your own blog, jeez! Comments (2)
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