Mac and Cheese and The Morality of Food
Mac and cheese from a box was something I used to deem “off limits.”
For me, ‘off limits’ foods were foods I would gaslight myself into thinking that I didn’t want or enjoy. Or foods I believed I couldn’t be trusted around. Foods that would just turn me into some ravenous, mindless beast.
I told myself (and anyone who would listen) that I didn’t “like” processed foods.
The gluten made me tired.
The sugar! Omg! Don’t get me started on the evils of sugar and how addictive it is, right?!
The fake powdered cheese with the dyes were an abomination to my elite taste buds and my pristine digestive system.
The thought of eating anything simply out of convenience or from a box was repulsive and disgusting to my health conscious self.
I built up this morality story around food.
A lot of my protective and performative layers of self were around, “how can I be better than other people?”
When I was in 4th grade I moved to a new school. We moved in the summer and I remember being really scared to start a new year at a new school with new people in a new place.
I have always loved clothes and expression through getting dressed and so my parents took me shopping for new clothes before school started. I got these two new outfits I thought were the coolest clothes I’ve ever had.
I proceeded to wear each outfit one day and the other the next day and then just kept wearing them on alternating days for weeks. It never occurred to me that someone would notice the repetition.
One day, I was in the library, alone as I hadn’t made any friends yet, and one of the cool girls came up to me and asked me if “I was poor or something” and that’s why I always wore the same clothes.
I was mortified. I don’t remember what happened after that, but I remember the feeling of complete and total humiliation.
I was wide open, so vulnerable, and BOOM I was hit with judgement.
At that moment, I made a pact with myself that from then on I would always be the coolest kid in any room. I’d always be better than everyone else.
If I’m better than them, then I know I’ll be safe, was the real thought process. If I’m the coolest then no one will be able to hurt me like that ever again.
And so everything in my life, including eventually what I ate, became a way to be better than other people.
To keep myself separate and holier than thou.
I told myself I only ate organic food because of my love of the earth and wanting to support local food systems.
I told myself I had so many “off limits” foods because of how deeply I respected and loved my body.
I told myself I couldn’t eat processed foods because I “knew” better than that.
I told myself that processed foods are addictive and my body cannot be trusted around them. If I ate a box of mac and cheese, who knows how and when I would stop?!
And you know what? There is truth in all of those things.
But the deeper reason, the real reason I made certain food off limits was because I made food represent morality.
As I’ve peeled back the layers of my protective and performance based identities and started to feel what is underneath them, so much of the morality I based my eating upon has just fallen away.
I do truly value choosing food that comes from local farmers and ranchers and my own homestead.
There is something energetically fulfilling about knowing my meat was treated humanely and had a good, healthy life and that my veggies and fruit were grown in a way that took the soil into consideration.
I do love and respect my body and really trust the ways it reacts to food and listen deeply to its communications with me.
I put a lot of time, energy and resources towards getting to know my body and its processes and physiology.
There is so much nuance here.
I know that as I’ve pulled the roots of “what I eat makes me better than” and “I cannot be trusted around food” I can happily eat mac and cheese from a box when the house is sparse on food and I’m craving some dense comfort food and I trust myself fully with it.
I can happily eat something from a gas station if I’m hungry and I need to eat and that’s all there is.
I can get some skittles or jelly beans because I feel like it and eat half the package, throw the rest away, and move on with my life.
I know that food itself is actually quite neutral. There is no morality to a hot dog or a peach or a milky way. They just are.
If I eat a peach and you eat a milky way, I’m not a better person than you.
Food isn’t just food, either. It is one of our main connections to living and life.
We don’t just want to “eat for fuel,” as this robs us of our sensual connection to our own sustenance and interaction with life.
Reverence for all food is my new pose. And it breeds reverence for all life.
Now, I don’t treat any food like it’s better than another. I eat what my body wants and listen to the way my body responds. I treat my relationship with food as if its my relationship to life.
I don’t want my life to feel restricted and tight. So I don’t restrict food.
I don’t want my life to feel controlled and rigid. So I don’t control food.
Nourishment is about so much more than food and nutrition. Nourishment comes from the food itself, but it also comes from how and where we eat it and with whom.
Nourishment comes from quality of life and living slow. Nourishment comes from sex and relationships and connection and nature.
Nourishment comes from body work and sleep and self intimacy.
How we nourish ourselves is how we live.
This is what we will be exploring in FED, my new 6 month journey that is like a feast for mind, body and soul. We begin in July. If you feel called to nourish yourself on all the levels, send me a message.
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