January is birthday season with my friends and family. There are tons of birthdays, mine included, during this month and after attending several birthday parties, I have noticed how much of our culture and socialization is wrapped up in food.
The reason that I have been thinking about this is, over the last several years I have developed some really severe food allergies. I never noticed how much our social structures revolve around food until I couldn’t eat it.
Today I got a smear of frosting on my finger off of my baby nephew, first impulse, lick it off… but if you have a food allergy, you know what I have learned to hard way, don’t!
Don’t get me wrong I’m not bitter.. (Well maybe just a little), but honestly I have gotten very used to not being able to take part in this ritual eating. I stick to fruit, if it is available, and herbal teas. Part of the food allergy has created a lot of damage to my digestive system so now in addition to being unable to eat dairy, I also can’t have anything high in sugar and anything really greasy, so that leaves my choices pretty low. The funny thing is it seems other people are bothered by it more than I am! “What, you can’t eat? What about this, what about that? How about a drink..” I try to explain that it is ok, I’m fine, I’m not upset, my feelings aren’t hurt, don’t be upset. You don’t have to make me anything special. And no, I’d rather not “try” something if I haven’t been able to read the packaging on it. Also no, I’m not interested in just pigging out once in a while for a special occasion and just suffering through afterwards, it’s just completely not worth it!
All of this has lead me to speculate as to why our socialized rituals are surrounded by food. Don’t get me wrong, I love food, but why can’t we just enjoy each other’s company without food? Why can’t we just … talk? Laugh? sing?? Maybe it’s maternal? Our need to nurture? Our need to feed? after all what is the first thing most new mothers do? Put their child to their breast immediately after birth, so basically we appear in this world and seconds later, Bam, someone is shoving food in your mouth! Although that makes me wonder, many people born in the 20th century were not breast fed and so maybe our need to eat has come from missing that initial birth feed?? Too Freudian?? I don’t know! If I was still in school and writing this as an assignment this would be where I would tie in a few peer reviewed journal articles and give a reason, but meh.. not today.
My goal in this blog is to create dialogue, and the best way to do that is by asking questions! Every authority out there will tell you we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic and there are lots of studies out there that link our western obesity epidemic to chemicals in our food, or lack of exercise, or some other X factor. Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree! Now being a neurotic label reader I can’t believe what is in the food we eat every day, but I think our social rituals have a lot to do with it how fat we are getting too.
Think about it, when someone is sick, we feed them. company ? Food. Need an excuse to invite someone over? Food. Holidays…food food food! Special occasion? Food! Love? Definetely food! Remember the movie Elf? When Buddy the Elf’s younger brother explains to him what a date was he says, ”you take a girl to dinner to eat food”, so Buddy’s way of asking out the girl of his dreams, “ do you want to eat food with me?”.
I don’t know really why we express love and friendship through food, and I wouldn’t dare think that I could possibly alter that age old social ritual, but I can question it and I am completely aware of it now that I am excluded from it. So please know, I love you even though I won’t eat your food. Its not that I don’t like it, you are a good friend, but I just can’t. I enjoy your company, I am having a good time and it doesn’t bother me (much) to watch others eat and not eat my self, I just whisper to myself, “I’m getting thinner and they are getting fatter, hahaha"
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