Eat & Enjoy It
It was a beautiful breezy evening on a beautiful island. I was with my close friend, her partner and my husband. We were enjoying local fish. I am still new to eating fish.
We were having different intellectual discussions. We touched on topics such as food, culture, literature, history, technology, travel among many others.
One of our group brought up a story that these days some people who don’t enjoy eating food are substituting it with pills and health drinks that provide everything with the human body needs.
I think in the long term humans may be trained to do so but at present, there are still obstacles with this.
1) Food is an important part of living as we satisfy all our senses while we are eating. When we eat something, we are not just mechanically satisfying our nutritional need like an appliance charging its battery. We smell the aroma, see the colours, feel the textures, and most important of all we satisfy our taste buds.
If we stop eating food as we consume today, all these other senses will be dissatisfied. We cannot afford to live comfortably and happily if we are denied these vital sensual experiences
2) Our body has a primitive habit of absorbing its nutrients from food. It’s not yet that accustomed to absorbing it all from pills. Pills are however good as supplements but they can’t replace food entirely.
3) If we stop supplying food to the body then the digestive system starts to power down. When we try to abruptly start eating food again, a body which has forgotten its digestive memory will have a hard time starting up again. So, it is not recommended to start a lifestyle that can’t be maintained healthily, easily and practically.
4) Eating food is also a social practice. We prefer to meet our friends over food. Meeting someone over food is a very inviting gesture. We trust them enough to incorporate them into a significant part of our life. We don’t want to eat with someone whom we don’t trust enough as our primitive brain starts to feel doubtful of survival and we can’t enjoy a meal in that situation.
5) For our civilisation, a meal is a celebration. It has taken people centuries as a collective to find so many pleasing recipes using various ingredients from all the regions of the world. A cuisine is a form of culture and history as well as a great source of local pride and international exchange.
Think how happy we get when we go out for Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Korean or Indian.
How happy we get when we eat with our dearest friends or family.
We can’t afford to lose these small pleasures of life if we want to thrive as humans
Perhaps after reflecting on these ideas, we will appreciate our next meal a bit more than usual.
