Believe it or not, Thanksgiving is almost here, and that son of a bitch snuck up quick. It’s amazing how the past two years have been simultaneously the longest and shortest years I’ve ever experienced. How it can possibly be almost December I have no idea, but there’s a part of me that refuses to accept that reality in the hopes that it might not actually come to pass.
There’s nothing wrong with December. I actually like the Christmas season. While I’m not one of those people who start Yuling the minute the clock strikes November, turning on Vince Guaraldi the day after Thanksgiving is a kind of ritual, and I really do enjoy stringing Christmas lights, hanging stockings, mulling wine, and melting chocolate into barks of various flavors.
Of course, Thanksgiving also marks the beginning of a dietary murderer’s row. It’s like a kickoff event for a month-long binge of rich, buttery cooking, accentuated with deep chocolate and bright peppermint, and studded with those candied fruits that ruin an otherwise fine spice loaf. Add in the plethora of holiday meats like turkey and ham and the mountain of vegetables slathered in butter and garlic and cream and whatever else transforms them into a holiday dish, and it’s no wonder that so many of us resolve to start the new year looking to lose a few pounds. You know, to make it easier to fasten our pants or breathe without sweating.
If I’m being totally honest, though, the holiday season doesn’t really change my eating habits all that much. If anything, the holidays help justify the way I normally eat, which goes a long way to explaining my many protuberances that turn t-shirts into sausage casings. But for one month, I have an excuse for my dietary crimes.
Like many of my fellow Americans, I have what you could call an unhealthy relationship with food. I’m an emotional eater. Food is both a reward and a comfort. I remember growing up thinking about the foods I would buy when I grew up. I dreamed of purchasing all the chips and candies and cookies and ice cream that I wanted, because my diet would be my own. If food was a reward, then I would be the ultimate arbiter of what factors merited rewarding—and I have very loose standards.
This is especially true when it comes to fast food. I grew up in Dublin, OH, only a few miles from the Wendy’s International headquarters. This was convenient, since I was such a big fan of Wendy’s food growing up. Every time I eat a spicy chicken sandwich, I can still picture my friends and I sitting in the Tuttle Crossing Wendy’s, bundled in thick sweaters and relishing the warm respite from the blustery winter weather outside.
Of course, I had more than my fair share of McDonald’s, too. When I was younger, my mom would give me some money after school, and I would take the short walk to the Dublin Plaza McDonald’s, where I would enjoy a value meal while my mom enjoyed some peace and quiet. I’d sit at the bar facing out the front window, enjoying the majestic view of the parking lot while trying to ignore the plastic tree diorama that dominated the children’s area directly behind me.
I have so many fond fast food memories. Arby’s (and it’s almost-long-lost cousin Rax) conjure memories of dinner after rounds of disc golf, while every Subway sandwich takes me back to Sunday afternoons during my senior year of college, when I would have a BMT and watch an afternoon of pro football.
From an intellectual standpoint, there’s nothing wrong with food being emotional. It’s so deeply ingrained in our nature that fighting against those connections is destined to be a losing battle. The trick is finding a way to control the impulses inspired by memory and emotion, and that’s easier said than done. Like other kinds of addictions, it’s a lifelong struggle, and many times we simply decide that it’s not worth the effort. And honestly, that’s not the worst thing in the world—as long as we’re cognizant of what’s actually happening.
In fact, I have a hunch that finding and maintaining a healthier attitude toward food needs to be as emotional as these unhealthy approaches. Just ask a vegan. Or wait for one to tell you about it.
Listen, I don’t have a problem with veganism. People have the right to eat however they want, whether that’s vegetarian, vegan, or fruitarian. What gets on my nerves is people who feel compelled to guilt you about your dietary choices. Feel free to extol the virtues of your meal of seitan and nutritional yeast washed down with homemade kombucha, but please give me the same consideration whether I’m eating a grilled chicken breast or a bacon double cheeseburger.
What really drives me crazy is when vegans fixate on the morality of veganism. I fully appreciate that the food chain as it exists is complicated, and there are many opportunities for exploitation and mistreatment. But please, don’t pretend that by cutting out animal products your hands are clean. Unless you’re growing and processing all of your own food, you still have no idea what injustices your food is responsible for. When veganism becomes virtue-signaling, that’s where I get off the train.
That’s not to say that feeling good about your meal is a bad thing. Take salads. I don’t know about you, but for me, eating a salad makes me feel intensely virtuous. And that’s okay—heck, I’d like to think it’s a great thing, especially when I don’t feel the need to broadcast my feelings to the world at large.
Our CSA experience this year opened me up to a range of different leafy greens that had only existed as filler on restaurant menus. Kale and swiss chard and mustard greens, arugula and spinach and turnip and beet greens, and so many other vegetables, all grown locally and organically, all with brighter, stronger flavors than anything I’d bought from Giant or Acme or Kroger or wherever. We had so many vegetables that salads were the only way to even come close to using all the food that we received each week.
When I sit down to eat a salad that I’ve made myself, I just feel good. I feel good about eating it and, once the initial shock to my system wears off, I feel physically good too. It flushes my system of so many of the negative emotions that I’ve developed with food. It’s a reminder that new things are tasty, and that there can be just as much comfort in a bowl of leaves as there is in any other dish.
In a way, the choice to eat a salad for lunch or dinner is a statement of personal value—specifically, that I am worth putting healthier things into my body in the hope of both enjoying them and making myself feel better over the long term. It’s less a palate cleanser, and more an affirmation of a goal for healthier living.
Of course, I should couch that virtuous feeling in a couple ways. First, the salad itself. The leaves themselves are tasty, but much like with ice cream, what I’m really after are the mix-ins. I’ve moved away from dressing in most cases, but the more things I can add to my salad, the more likely I am to enjoy it.
I’m not going to the lengths of fast food restaurants, who lade their greens with so many fatty, high-calorie additions they end up being far worse for you than their other menu offerings. But I like things with strong, contrasting flavors, and that can limit the health benefits of my salad. I’ll usually add bell peppers and mushrooms, which is innocent enough. But then I’ll slice some kalamata olives, which although innocuous in small doses carry a high sodium and fat load. Then, of course, I add feta and some chopped lunchmeat ham, and the whole thing can quickly go to nutritional hell, if I’m not careful.
Yes, it’s as salty as it sounds. But compared to what I would eat otherwise, it has to be an improvement, and the nutritional value of the vegetables is hard to overstate. And the whole thing is worth it based on how good I feel after eating my salad—whether it’s earned or not.
The second caveat is simply consistency. Adding in a salad here and there is certainly healthier than, like, not adding a salad. But it also smacks of half-measures, and as a result I often find myself eating worse than ever. Remember that food-as-reward thing I mentioned earlier? Sometimes I feel so virtuous after my salad that I feel like I should reward myself with chips, cookies, nuts…whatever I have in the pantry or the fridge.
When this happens, I usually end up eating more of this crap than I would have otherwise, and while the nutrition I get from a salad is surely better than I would get otherwise, it could end up being a wash when it comes to trying to reduce my bulging shape.
Food is a hard thing. We want what we want, and our bodies are at the mercy of our psyches, which are assailed daily by the increasing overabundance of convenient processed foods and our own positive memories associated with these products. Just writing about Wendy’s makes me long for a spicy chicken sandwich, both for the taste and for the feeling of being transported back to those happy memories of my youth.
It all comes down to the fact that I can’t say that I’ll eat any better than I normally would this holiday season. And I don’t think I should feel bad about that. I’m going in fully aware of the dietary crimes I’m about to commit, and that’s fine. I would rather enjoy my holiday than obsess over calories and nutrition. That’s a choice that I’m making—and I’m comfortable with it.
Still, it might be worth considering making those virtuous salads a bigger part of my weekly meal planning. It’s so easy to choose options that require less work, or will deliver a bigger, longer-lasting hit of dopamine. But there’s something to be said for breaking habits and building new ones.
Maybe the feeling I get when I eat the occasional salad could build upon itself, making each next salad more satisfying than the last. Or maybe each salad will provide diminishing returns, leaving me longing for a quick hit of cheesy beef or the crunch of a breaded chicken breast, or the cheap, easy convenience of a Wawa meatball hoagie. Even as I write this, my stomach is growling at the thought of driving down the street and picking up an Italian sub.
Food is a journey. It’s a process. It’s a battleground. It’s a challenge. Food is both something that hurts us and something that makes us whole. It’s a source of comfort and a source of shame. It’s a blessing and a curse, a smile and a frown, a place where we come together to celebrate and where we diverge into sparring camps. Food is both easy and hard, lionized and vilified, and there’s no easy answer anywhere to be found.
We love and hate food, and we love and hate ourselves when we eat it. There’s no avoiding the fact that we all have to eat, and the options for what we use to fuel our bodies and our souls are both wide and narrow, depending on a number of factors. At least for the coming month, I’m leaning into comfort. That’s my choice, and I regret nothing.
Not until January, anyway.
MetaFrizzics 