How one should feel while eating is, I suspect, a question often deliberated upon but little discussed. You probably haven’t heard too many people lament, “I don’t know how to enjoy my food the correct amount.” But I’m sure you have probably said something similar to yourself on many occasions as you go through the daily inner battle over what to eat and when to stop eating.
One reason we might be confused is that our society sends us conflicting messages about how much and in what way we should enjoy eating. We should definitely not refuse sweets when offered, but we should not get fat. We shouldn’t eat too many boring vegetables, but we should be skinny as a rail. When it comes down to it, we should eat just a little bit of unhealthy, tasty goodies and enjoy them a little bit but definitely not too much.
Our culture also sends us somewhat conflicting messages about whether or not eating should be a social, ritualistic activity. “Breaking bread” together used to signify a ceremony of union between people. We still often eat with people as a bonding, social activity; we meet friends for coffee or invite them over for dinner. Or at least some people do. On the other hand, some people don’t even eat dinner with their own families any more. Each person just gets something out of the fridge, microwaves it and retreats to her room to eat in front of her personal TV. Eating is definitely not supposed to take much time anymore. Even if you do eat with people, you’re supposed to quickly heat it up, stuff it in and move on with your life.
The result of all this madness is that people end up experiencing a very odd type of pleasure while eating their food. Since we are either eating while doing something else or eating at top speed, we are, in a sense, absent to the sensual experience of eating. However, we are not indifferent to it, because, as the country’s obesity rate shows, we find it very difficult to stop. I think these two phenomena are intimately linked; as long as we are not fully present with the pleasure of eating, we will not feel that we have gotten enough. When I am on a late-night refrigerator raid, I am not taking notice of the bite in my mouth while I’m chewing it. I am actually already thinking about the next one. This constant anticipation leads to the endless string of dissatisfaction that makes me unable to stop.
Even though we are absent to the sensual experience of eating and, in a sense, treat it as something we just do in order to be able to get on with our lives, we still long for the spiritual sustenance it once gave us. We do not quietly honor the spiritual power of food, however, by creating social rituals around it. Instead, we try to get spiritual sustenance out of it quickly and absent-mindedly. My late-night binges are usually linked to a feeling of emptiness in my soul. I eat out of an insatiable desire to fill this hole, but the fact that I am doing this ends up making me more depressed. If I simply take the time to create a beautiful plate of something for myself, sit down at a table and calmly and ritualistically eat it, I end up actually feeling spiritually satiated.
Eating should be a highly pleasurable activity, both for the body and the soul. It is an affirmation of our vitality. But enjoying food the right amount and in the right way is the tricky part. Strangely, the way to escape being enslaved by the pleasure of food is to sink deeply into that very pleasure and celebrate it reverently in body and soul. Then both body and soul will be free of the sense of emptiness, and people can truly “get on with their lives” in a way that doesn’t imply that eating wasn’t a valuable part of them.
