The Most Important Thing You'll Do Today Is Eat

An essay on America's toxic relationship with food

“Unlimited Food Store” is a humorous name I use for grocery stores, mostly to myself, as a reminder of how mind-blowing it is that I have unfettered access to nourishment at almost hours of the day.

That’s not true of every part of the world, and its especially not true of every time period in history. And I’m sad to say that I don’t take advantage of those Unlimited Food Stores as much as I ought to.

Too often I pay $20 something dollars for a meal, when I could make five of the same dish, each for a fraction of what the restaurant meal would cost, if I had simply made a trip to Trader Joe’s.

As of late, I’m getting better, though. But its surprising that it’s taken me so long to come into that habit, and amongst my peers, I sense its a similar, surprising struggle.

Perhaps, the struggle stems from the immense number of food related distractions we’re exposed to. We’re constantly being sold (mostly bad) food on TV, Billboards, and anywhere advertisements appear.

I find it most strange when I see an ad for food at another restaurant; you can go to a sports bar, eat sports bar food from the sports bar kitchen, and a commercial can come on the TV advertising a fast food chicken sandwich.

But it’s not just fast food distracting us from good food habits. It’s the meal services that ship frozen meals to your door, like Hello Fresh or Blue Apron. And it’s meal delivery services like Postmates and Grubhub and Door Dash and Uber Eats, which gouge you on delivery fees, to bring your favorite restaurant eats to your door.

a postmates snap chat filter

The underpinning of these three institutions of our food culture is this: You don’t have time to make good meals, let us fix that for you.

From a capitalist perspective, that’s a genius niche to fill. From a cultural and health standpoint, it makes me think, “what the fuck?”

The most basic aspect of surviving—besides continuing to breathe and live—is putting food in our pie-holes. So how did we mess up so bad that we don’t give any time to it?

What’s More Important Than Eating?

Almost nothing, but our culture operates otherwise. In our work obsessed country, we’re afforded little time to eat and thus little time to eat right.

This is a product, I think, of living in a society so good at not-dying. I discuss this concept in my article on the apocalypse; we are so bogged down with the entirely fabricated parts of our existence that we’ve essentially scoffed at what we do have: food, shelter, trusted friends and family.

Take a step back and realize how insane it is, that you work all day to earn money to put food on the table, and that during those long days of work, you’re afforded maybe 30 minutes to eat. Those 30 minutes don’t mean access to a kitchen, they mean eating your sad, refrigerated Caesar salad, or running to a place that probably sells fries.

That’s backwards. That’s Modern Anxiety.

To look at it another way would be to ask the question, why do people love Europe so much?

Europe has rich history, a deep appreciation for the arts, and stunning architecture, yes, but people are also enamored with the continent because it has excellent food across a variety of cultures. Those cultures properly value eating. They eat big meals together. They prioritize wine and beer and cooking with craft and the community that comes with it. America could use more of that.

Pandemic Shift

An unforeseen benefit of the pandemic is the erosion of some of our blindly ambitious work culture.

With entire work forces logging in remotely from the comfort of their respective homes, the lords of the office have less power to micromanage their employees.

Work-from-home has proven that being handcuffed to an office desk isn’t a crucial part of workplace productivity. It’s proven that it’s okay to step out to walk your dog. It’s shown that it’s okay to cook some lunch and enjoy it, and that doing so doesn’t equate to the destruction of a business.

Season 2 of the sketch comedy program, I Think You Should Leave, opens with a scene about what can go wrong when an employee is asked to skip lunch.

Increased time at home has also proven that days are long. With less coerced productivity and less commuting, people seem to suddenly have more time than they did before 2020. And the understanding of how truly long a day of conscious existence is has been an integral part in my prioritization of nourishment.

It wasn’t always like that for me. I was so preoccupied with “shit I had to get done,” that I had convinced myself I didn’t have time to cook, that I was being more efficient by running to the burger joint next door, and scarfing down my meals.

At the end of these scarf sessions, I usually feel some dissatisfaction, not because I don’t appreciate a good restaurant meal—I do, I love them—but because I was doing it too often.

For one, I was spending way too much cheddar doing it, and even if it did save me time, I found that whatever I so direly needed to get back to was no longer as urgent, once I was satiated. Or perhaps there wasn’t all that much to accomplish in the first place, and that anxiety was really just hunger.

Part of this is my own special brand of neuroticism, but I tell my side of the story, because I think it’s relatable. And perhaps by hearing about the anxieties rattling around in my noggin, you might come to identify and work through your own.

But anxieties about food are not just personal, their cultural. And our culture does plenty to contribute to that angst.

Am I Eating Healthy?

We’ve made that question much more loaded than it should be. The best guiding principal I’ve come across is this:

If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don’t.

-Robert Pollan

That’s simple, sage advice—but I didn’t come across it until I’d been on the earth for more than a quarter century, and not until after I was inundated with all sorts of nutrition advice that confused the daylights out of me.

For one, I grew up believing grain was the base of the food pyramid. Today, there are entire books arguing that grain isn’t good for our brains; and I know people who avoid most grains and starches.

That’s one of many examples of flip-floppery on what is and isn’t good for us. I could probably write a whole ‘nother essay on the head-splitting number of intense diets that have raged into the mainstream—all of which seem to contradict each other in ways big and small.

And that isn’t even to mention the moral weight that’s levied on us as individuals for what we eat. Don’t eat meat, it’s killing the earth! Don’t eat fish, it’s killing the oceans! Don’t drink milk, it uses so much water! Almond milk isn’t actually good for the environment!

There is certainly truth to these movements, and certainly there is balance to be found—for example, you can get meat from environmentally friendly sources—but I’m trying to illustrate that moral considerations, in addition to nutritional information confusion, in addition to overwhelming prevalence of processed foods, in addition to bad work culture, in addition to non-stop advertising, all makes for a poisonous relationship with the thing we should be practically worshipping.

The giant corporations that make all those crap-snacks that are sold in gas stations probably like it this way. The more exhausting it is to think about eating right, the easier it is to cave, and buy a bag of mini-oreos.

Here’s an ad from Instagram that nearly gave me an aneurysm.

I’m not saying I’ve got the golden ticket to the best diet. I’m here telling you that much of the United States is lost when it comes to eating right—and that undoubtedly part of the nation’s inability to find a healthy way forward is because of the fatigue of fighting through the food fog.

I think we all want to eat right, and ideally, eat right not only for our bodies, but for our earth. That’s certainly something to strive for—but I think too often, as individuals, we try to save the world in one fowl swoop. But we’re up against a lot of a societal forces. And maybe—for a start—we need to learn to appreciate food. We need to learn prioritize it. We need to build a good relationship with diet. And in doing so, a lot of positive personal and global change will follow.

And the next time you’re rushing through a meal, remember! The most important thing you’ll do today is eat.

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