Sometimes you just need to eat cheesecake and other important truths about food
Let’s talk about food. I do not mean let’s talk about creamy plates of butternut squash risotto … or steaming bowls of curried sweet potato soup … (Both recipes of mine featured in “The Catholic Digest,” by the way.)
Instead, I mean let’s talk about why we care about butternut squash risotto and get all excited about curried sweet potato soup. Why do we cook? Why do we eat? Why do we spend so much time, money, and energy fretting our little heads about food?
My Facebook feed has the answer. Or, rather, it thinks it does. Almost daily, one friend or another, making an attempt at preventative virtue, posts about his or her new diet and the philosophy of food behind it: “I eat for energy”; “I’m eating clean”; “I’m eating like a caveman.” Of course, right alongside those posts are ads for Godiva chocolate, urging me to “Indulge,” as well as images from food blogs (mine included), which post pictures of tasty treats tantalizing enough to tempt even the strictest of ascetics to break their fast.
My own complicity in this problem aside, the question remains: Who is right? Do we eat for health? Or do we eat for pleasure? Is it right to eat for nutrition, but wrong to eat for comfort? Is it virtuous to treat food as fuel but wrong to treat it as a reward?
My answers: Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. No. Got that? Right. I will go over it again.
Yes, we eat for health. And, yes, we eat for pleasure. Yes, it is right to eat for nutrition. But no, it is not wrong to eat for comfort. And yes, there is virtue in recognizing the energy needs of your body and meeting those needs. At the same time, though, no, there is nothing wrong with
rewarding yourself with a piece of apple pie after you finally get around to cleaning out your basement. I understand some of my answers fly in the face of the advice diet gurus typically dish out: “Don’t eat for comfort and never use food as a reward,” they say. But you know what? Their advice flies in the face of God’s design of the universe. Let me explain.
The Way We Are
My explanation starts with this simple truth: food was not necessary. It was not. God did not have to make our bodies in such a way that we needed to be fed morning, noon, and night. He did not have to make our bodies in such a way that we needed to be fed at all. If He willed it, we could have gotten our nutrition and energy from the sun, the trees and the rain, like plants do. (“Good idea,” think cooking-weary moms everywhere).
God also did not have to fragment the nutrition we need across five different food groups or hundreds of different vegetables, fruits, grains, and animals. He could have concentrated it all in one little plant. Kale really could have been the be all, end all.
God did not have to make food taste so darned good. The whole lot of it could have tasted like dirt or beets. Yeah, I know, same thing. Still, it could have. Lemons did not have to be tart. Arugula did not have to be peppery. Bacon did not have to be so sweet … and salty … and Magical.
I am not sure how an atheist would understand these things. But for people who believe that God created the world and loves the world, it is just plain illogical to dismiss the pleasure and comfort value of food. Food is supposed to give us pleasure! Food is supposed to give us comfort! And of course food is supposed to be a way that we give love, receive love, celebrate triumphs, and mourn defeats! That is all part of God’s design.
By Design
As for why God designed food (and us) that way, well, reasons abound. To begin with, our need for food—food that someone has to grow, cook and store—draws us to one another. It brings us together in friendship and cooperation. It also brings us together around a kitchen table, where we do not just eat, but talk, laugh and look one another in the eye—something we might not do nearly as often if we just soaked up all our nutrition from the sun, like we soak up Vitamin D.
Then, there is hunger, which comes upon us with clockwork-like regularity. Our experience of hunger and our need to eat remind us that we are not enough. We are not self-sustaining eco-systems. We are dependent creatures. We need to be nourished. We need to be fed, with food and so much more.
Which brings us to the next reason: supernaturally speaking, food also helps us understand the Eucharist. As a Catholic, I do not believe the Eucharist is a symbol of Christ’s Body and Blood: I believe that in the Holy Mass, on the altar, bread and wine truly become Christ’s Body and Blood. Food, on the other hand, I very much see as a symbol. And that is because every natural truth about food points beyond itself to a supernatural truth about the Eucharist.
In “These Beautiful Bones,” I devoted a whole chapter to this. Here, I have room for two paragraphs. Sorry. You can always read the book. In essence, though, food—which requires sacrifice to grow, buy and prepare— nourishes us, strengthens us, comforts us and brings us together. Likewise, the Eucharist—Christ’s perpetual sacrifice of self-gift—nourishes us with God’s life, strengthens us with God’s grace, comforts us with God’s love, and brings us together into one Body, the Body of Christ.
Food’s ability to do that—to be both what it is and more than it is, to reveal truths about God and man simply by existing—is not a coincidence. It is one of the best examples of God’s genius for metaphor, for creating a world where the natural sheds light on the supernatural. Herman Melville has nothing on the Holy Trinity.
All the big, important stuff like community and the Eucharist aside, there is at least one more reason why God made food the way He did, because He loves us. Seriously. God’s love is manifested in every cocoa bean and coffee bean, every grape, every stalk of wheat, every Brussels sprout. The endless variety, the limitless combinations, and the delightful tastiness of it all is more goodness than any of us deserve. It is all gratuitous. It is all unnecessary. It is all a complete, unmerited gift. I do not deserve bacon jam. You do not deserve bacon jam. None of us deserve bacon jam. We are weak, foolish, and selfish sinners. But you know what God gives us? Bacon jam.
Receiving the Gift
Besides going to Bakn the next time you are in Pittsburgh, what do you need to do to thank God for this gift and then receive it? It starts, I think, by simply recognizing food as a gift. Yes, food is fuel. And yes, food can be an occasion of temptation or sin. It can also become a means of control, avoiding emotions, or dealing with our problems. But that is not food’s fault. That is our fault.
We are fallen, broken creatures, who do not always know how to properly respond to the gifts God has given us. Most of us are predisposed to abusing His gifts left, right and center—not just food, but also sex, our bodies, our intellect and our material possessions. If, however, we want to grow in holiness and virtue, if we want to become mature Christians, we have to stop the cycle of abuse and learn how to use God’s gifts rightly—to see them for what they are, receive them with thanksgiving, and use them for their proper ends.
In terms of food, this means seeing food as a blessing which fosters community, self-knowledge and points to the Eucharist. It also means bringing the cardinal virtues to the dinner table with us: practicing temperance by eating one cookie, not three; exercising prudence by taking a larger portion of spinach and a smaller portion of garlic mashed potatoes; exercising fortitude by making those hard choices every day, not just once in awhile; and exercising justice by seeking to give our bodies their due (but not at the expense of our budget, the poor, or those who host us for a meal or two). Last of all—and this brings us back to where we started—it means eating that piece of cheesecake on your birthday. It means breaking open the good bottle of wine when you get your hard-earned promotion. And it means curling up with a bowl of bacon and jalapeño
macaroni and cheese when someone rear ends your new car, then drives off, sticking you with the repair costs. I am not saying eat two pieces of cake, drink past the “point of hilarity” or chase the mac and cheese with an entire quart of ice cream. (Really. Do not. You will get sick. Nobody can handle that much dairy.) Just let food be what God made it to be, all in good measure.
From Theory to Reality
I know this is easier said than done for many of you, myself—a former anorexic—included. I get that the journey from abusing food to loving food and using it properly can be a long one, traveled in fits and starts, with plenty of falls and setbacks along the way.
I also know that for those of you who need to overcome bad food-related habits, such as being overly reliant on food for emotional support, part of that journey will require taking a break from using food for comfort or as a reward. That was part of my journey as well. Thankfully, it was not a long one.
One of these days I promise to write more about what helped me break those bad habits. For now, suffice it to say that the most important help I had was simply this: I knew where I was going.
When I came to understand what food was, when I came to see it as a touchstone for culture and community, a sign of the Eucharist and a manifestation of God’s love, I stopped wanting to abuse it. I discovered a road I did not know existed and a destination I never would have imagined. Eventually, that discovery made all the difference.
So, as holidays and celebrations bear down on us, if you are someone who struggles with food, do not panic. Do not hop on the latest fad diet craze. And do not make your family miserable by banishing all the good things from your cupboard.
Instead, pray. Go to adoration. Receive the Eucharist as often as you can. As you do, see God becoming food. See God feeding you. See His love manifested for you in spiritual nourishment. Then, let that spiritual nourishment start to change your vision of physical nourishment.
This is not the end of the journey; it is the beginning.
Emily Stimpson is a freelance Catholic writer based in Steubenville, Ohio. Her books include “These Beautiful Bones: An Everyday Theology of the Body (Emmaus Road), “The Catholic Girl’s Guide for the Single Years (Emmaus Road), and her latest, co-authored with Brian Birch, “The American Catholic Almanac: A Daily Reader of Patriots, Rogues, and Ordinary People Who Changed the United States (Image). Stimpson is contributing editor to “Our Sunday Visitor” and a blogger for CatholicVote.org. Article originally appeared in The Catholic Table (www. TheCatholicTable.com). Reprinted with permission.
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