As we head further into the holiday season I think it’s a good time to launch my series on respecting food roles. Indeed, sometime over the next few weeks you’ll see this entire site transform before your very eyes! The banner will change from its leafy tendrils to a food-related theme and the name will change from “Intentional Living” to “Respect Food Roles.” And what are those roles? Glad you asked. As I’ve thought about that question I’ve come up with only two legitimate ones: fuel and fellowship.In other words, you need food to keep your body running, and you need food to draw people together. If you look at all of the posts I’ve done about food on this site and on Intentional Hospitality, you’ll see that those are the two areas I’ve been exploring. Here’s the interesting thing: I didn’t realize that I was doing this when I was writing that material. It was only recently, as I prepared for a talk at a women’s retreat and struggled to encapsulate my attitudes towards food, that I recognized those two streams of thought. If the food you’re eating doesn’t fulfill at least one of those two roles, then it’s not being treated respectfully.
How weird, you say. How can I respect a pork chop? Let me give you a dictionary definition of this word:
“Have due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of.”
Food doesn’t have feelings or wishes, of course, but it certainly has traditions associated with it and, in a sense, rights—that is, it has a proper place in life that should not be violated. The first two words in the definition set the stage: I’d say that all respectful behavior has to include “due regard.” The imperative therefore is:
Pay attention.
It’s a little ironic that I’m writing this post on this particular late afternoon/early evening. A little while ago I fried up the bag of shallots I bought before Thanksgiving so that they wouldn’t end up going bad. While some of them got burned, they’re on the whole truly delicious. And I’ve been finding them irresistible as they’re sitting there on the paper-towel-covered plate. I just reminded myself, “You’re not taking your own advice!” as I sn-a-a-cked on some of them. They’re for use on our salad at dinner; they’re not just for nibbling. At least I’ve been keeping myself from bringing the plate over to the table instead of leaving it on the stove, so I can’t just keep reaching for a few more scrumptious slivers as I type. (My laptop keys would be pretty greasy if I were doing that!)
Anyway, before I get into a fuller discussion of food’s fuel and fellowship roles, I want to make a couple of preliminary points. First, absolutely nothing that I’m going to say in this series of blog posts (and, I hope, later on in some videos and perhaps a book) is new. My wording may be at least somewhat original, in the sense that I don’t see anyone online using the idea of “respecting” food the way I do. (People use this terminology to refer to being careful not to waste food, and while that’s a good subject for exploration it’s not my emphasis.) But my overall ideas are based on simple common sense. A Scripture verse that is relevant here is from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes:
There is nothing new under the sun.
Be extremely wary of any food- or health-related postulates that claim to “change the way the body works.” That sounds like a quick path to the grave! God has exquisitely designed our bodies to function in a certain way. I’ll keep things as they are, if you don’t mind.
Secondly, while my ideas aren’t new, they do, for most people, require a mental shift. You have to start thinking of food and eating in a way that’s somewhat foreign to our culture of abundance and instant gratification. I would never have to write this material for the benefit of my hardworking Mennonite farmer ancestors, for example, because they knew how hard it was to produce food; they lived out that reality every day. I’m fond of saying that a woman who’d watched the peaches on her tree in the front yard mature, hoping that a late frost wouldn’t kill the buds or an early frost kill the fruit, then climbed up on a ladder and picked them, sorted them, dunked them in boiling water and peeled them, sliced them, and canned them, was never going to see that jar of fruit as something to eat mindlessly. It cost her too much effort. She’d serve it as part of a meal, perhaps on its own or in a pie or a cobbler, items that would require a whole new effort. There were no chips on her shelves, no pop in her (nonexistent) refrigerator.
As long as we think of food as something that should always be around and consumed without consequences, we don’t respect it. The change has to start with our mindset, and the following verses from the Book of Proverbs emphasize that idea, with the word “heart” meaning not the pump in your chest but the seat of your intelligence and emotions—your mind:
“Keep thine heart with all diligence.” (Prov. 4:23)
“For as [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he.” (Prov. 23:7)
A quick example of how this shift would work would be from:
Thinking of a candy bar as a reward
to
Thinking of it as junk.
I remember a conversation with one of Jim’s friends from college, a woman who was very conscious of her weight struggles and who said, “I just feel that when I stop for gas I should be able to buy myself a candy bar.” Hey, one candy bar isn’t going to kill you! I’ve eaten a few myself. (PayDay candy bars are the best.) That’s not the point here; it’s the attitude: I should be able to. I deserve a treat. I shouldn’t have to deprive myself. And as long as you have that treat/deprivation dichotomy in your head you’ll give in to temptation. But as soon as you shift over to thinking of candy as junk, the temptation (largely) disappears. As I’ve said before somewhere on this blog, I call the candy section of Costco “the poison aisle.”
Perhaps that’s enough for now, as I try to keep my posts to around 1,000 words. So I’ve just barely scratched the surface today. Much more to come!
For further reading: “What Healthy Treats Do You Give Yourself? (Note the ‘Healthy’)”