Save It For When You're Alone

Can we just have a goddamn moratorium on talking about our food for a few weeks? I am sick to death of having to discuss every minute aspect of what I eat, from the level of high fructose corn syrup to the fat and sodium levels to the way the meat was raised to whether there is gluten in the oatmeal to whether the vegetables are local to whether one is eating too much or eating too much "bad" stuff. Suddenly eating has become a litmus test of one's goodness and decency, and the requisite obsessiveness borders on insanity. All of these things have become concerns for me, and yes, I do go out of my way to buy humanely-raised food and to avoid excessive "bad" ingredients. But at some point those things need to be put away, so that the only discussion of food at a meal becomes how good it tastes and how nice it was of the cook to make it. Dinner parties should never include talk of what shouldn't have gone into the food (or imminent disapproval couched in piercing questions about same) or what certain people can't or won't eat. Keep it to yourselves. Don't take it if you don't want it. Eating meals under such circumstances is like trying to have sex while the parties are considering which positions will most contribute to blood flow in the appropriate parts, what activities should be eschewed by certain religious practitioners, or what kinds of damage some types of activities can do to the softer parts of a human body. After all that, who the hell has the heart to go on?

From now on, such discussions should be relegated to the same exile as those about bathroom habits---to which, in many ways, they have evolved to bear a striking resemblance, anyway.