Wednesday, June 20, 2012

The Ties That Bind

When I started this blog, I knew that I wanted to explore Food Culture in all of its many forms. Of course, by Food Culture, I mean the beliefs and rituals of food that we share as a society, specifically American society. It is Food Culture that insists you must overindulge on Thanksgiving because… it’s Thanksgiving! It is Food Culture that makes chocolate mandatory on Valentine’s Day, a cocktail de rigueur on New Year’s Eve, and hot dogs a necessity all summer long. Food Culture also dictates that birthdays and weddings must have cake and the winter holidays must have pie. These are the gastronomic rules that we live and eat by.

But there is also such a thing as food culture. The difference between Food Culture and food culture is simple. While Food Culture requires potato salad at a summer picnic, food culture says it must be your mother’s potato salad drenched in mayonnaise and dense with hard-boiled eggs. Or your mother’s potato salad glistening with a hot bacon vinaigrette. Or your mother’s potato salad studded with crunchy celery and the skins left on. The key to food culture is that it is about you, your family, your friends. Think of it this way: Food Culture is universal, while food culture is personal.

A classic example of this is something I’ve spoken of before: my husband’s love of pasta. Pasta has always been a serious part of the food culture between me and my better half. For the first twenty-five years of our relationship, we were in sync when it came to all things semolina. Perhaps we differed on the best sauce for the noodle– he preferred tomato, I was a pesto girl – but on the noodle itself, we were in total agreement. No matter what the form, from rigatoni to spaghetti, fettuccine to linguine, we were of one mind and one opinion. Pasta = good.

But then I had to go and do an obnoxious thing. I lost a hundred pounds and stopped eating pasta. It was as though I had renounced my vows: for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in… pasta? This has been a serious source of tension in our relationship for the last five years. Who knew the power of a mere noodle?

So often it seems that food culture is the glue that binds us together. Whether it’s pizza and wings, or wine and cheese, or coffee and bagels really doesn’t matter; what matters is the ritual and meaning we ascribe to it. And for the formerly overweight person, there are no really good options for navigating this terrain. You can leave the food culture unchallenged, but that’s probably what made you fat in the first place. You can quietly resist the forbidden foods, or even avoid social events altogether if the temptation is too much. If you are really brave, you can try to change the food culture of your friends and family, though in my experience most people are highly resistant to that sort of thing and in the end you may wind up feeling like just one more insufferable convert.

Dealing with food culture after a large weight loss requires adjusting many, and possibly all, of your relationships to the new realities of your life. Who knows what might happen when you decide you don’t want to eat pasta anymore. Will the people in your life accept the new you or will a rift develop? It’s a scary thing to contemplate.

Sometimes I wonder if perhaps for many people it might actually be easier to regain one hundred pounds than to figure out how to regain a relationship without the super-glue of food.

2 comments:

  1. What a great distinction you've made between Food Culture and food culture, Sandy. While Food Culture is the product of our collective imaginations, food culture carries substance and meaning, making it much harder to deal with. You mentioned potato salad. It's more than potato salad; it's a much-cherished connection to something precious that goes way beyond the practicalities of food. We just have to realize that importance doesn't make the fat and calories go away, and must somehow find a way to deal with that accordingly. As for the pasta, well, whether someone is giving up smoking, drinking, or unhealthy food habits, one should be getting support at home. The commitment to the person comes before the commitment to the food, any food, or it should. With patience and perspective, there are opportunities to have those "I'm the only one who eats this" foods when the other person isn't there. It just means he has to accept it as a special treat, and not as an every week thing.

    Ben

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    1. Ben, I think we all have a food that is like a drug to us. Pasta is my drug and I think it's my husband's drug too. That's why it's such a hard topic for us, because it's not a rational conversation, it's an addiction conversation. I wish it were easier, but that's life!

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