The calorie intake for a city contains enough energy to power a rocket on its way to the moon. There is such an abundance of food it has become a natural resource, like sunlight or mud. On television we watch middle-aged chefs dance around huge kitchens, spritzing cheeks of veal with saffron to be fed to minor celebrities. We eat better than any king in the entirety of human civilization. The sublimation of sexual energy into creating food. Cooking is foreplay, eating is fucking, digestion as a form of pregnancy. The foods that are taboo are not based on their components but how healthy they are deemed to be. It is less important that a pig was slaughtered and more about how it is presented; a sausage McMuffin or a sliver of flesh served with a sage and black olive fondant? There is a violence in food preparation, its tools are somewhere between medieval torture instruments and modern medical devices. It is a process heavily reminiscent of death, for we eat the dead (animal or vegetable).
There are those that feed like birds, eating is no longer a way to feel fulfilled but a process of absence. They are drawn towards zero, like orbiting the event horizon of a black hole, often their lives revolve around nothingness and attaining this zen-like state is the entirety of their existence. There are those that feed like hogs, eating is no longer a way to feel fulfilled but a process of stuffing. They receive pleasure from the sweet foods, the childish foods, the foods of apes. They cannot receive pleasure in any other way except for the brief moment on the tongue; they masticate to fill a hole in their stomach that exists in the mind. Their lives also revolve around nothingness, though rather than becoming lost in the void they would rather replace it and have everything fall into them.
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Those between these two extremes are themselves haunted by the prospect of balance. This is where complex diets come in, rituals passed down by modern gastropriests that one should follow to attain weightlessness. A paleo, gluten-free, organically farmed, locally sourced diet is perceived as one of many possibilities, to be joined with Atkins, Ketogenic, CRAM and other ways in which people who don't know how to eat look towards for inspiration. If anybody was to eat these certain foods then they will all end up looking the same. Diets are a fascist concept.
You may be reading this and wonder what it is that I eat? Well I shall tell you. Every one hundred steps I pick up the nearest thing and eat it. Leaves, gum, boomerangs, sandwiches, insects, dogs, cars, buildings, jewels, anything. By not considering at all what I eat besides following this basic rule, my diet is much more varied than that of the average person. Less a Food Pyramid and more a Food Hanging Gardens Of Babylon. Of course, there is no correct way to eat food, just to eat when hungry and remember vegetables.
Stillleben mit Fleischkorb, Frans Snyder
