Look to Food

Think about the current state of eating in America. It used to be that most meals were made at home, or made down the street by someone you knew. Then came the invention of the microwave dinner, the first major processed food. Suddenly, you didn’t have to cook. You could go out and buy pre-made meals and store them in the freezer.

Then fast food and drive-thrus entered the scene. Now you could sit in your car to order food, and sit in your car to eat. Alone. Around the same time came the explosion of ultra-processed foods (“manufactured calories”). “Food,”manufactured calories, became cheap and abundant everywhere. You could eat anywhere, anytime.

And now present day someone delivers your food straight to your door. Without having to talk to anyone or see anyone. 

We keep looking for complex answers to the complex questions: Why are we so divided and why are we so unhealthy? But the answer is simple, and it’s the same for both questions.

Food.

When we broke bread as a family, we were killing two birds with one stone. We were coming together, and we were nourishing our bodies. Now, most of us accomplish neither each day. Most of us are happy to tap a few buttons and have food magically appear before our eyes, and think nothing of it. We’ve made eating into a habit instead of the spiritual practice it used to be.

But food is so much more than a habit or just a means to get calories. It’s so much more important. Food is nature, and when grow our own food, when we cook our own meals, it’s an opportunity to connect with nature and the bounty it provides. Our body gets more than calories and nutrients. It’s nourished by the earth, grounded by the process.

When we gather around the kitchen to cook we connect with our family and our community. When we cook for someone else, when we feed someone else, we’re connecting on the human need to be nourished. To take care of someone else. Whatever our differences might be, they melt in the presence of a meal together. They melt in the offering of a home cooked meal.

When I see food delivery drivers drop a bag of food off and run back to their car before anyone comes to the door, I cringe. It gives me anxiety. Because there is no better evidence of just how disconnected we are.

We don’t see where the ingredients for our food comes from. We don’t see how it’s being prepared. We don’t smell the amazing aromas that fill a kitchen. We don’t know who’s cooking for us. We don’t hear the sizzling or clanging of pans. We don’t know who’s preparing the dish. And we don’t even see who’s serving us anymore. We are 100% removed from the process, and just left with one job.

To eat.

But that’s not the purpose of food, and it never was.