What is your food ideology?
The Art of Simple Food
Everyone has an ideology. As I understand it, an ideology is a coherent set of beliefs — often about the way the world works or should work — that you hold in tandem with other people in your community (family, country, school of thought, subculture, etc).1
Let me propose that everyone also has a “food ideology.” A food ideology is a coherent set of beliefs about what is “good” to eat, where good can mean just about anything you want it to mean: healthy, tasty, convenient, moral, etc.
Next let’s brainstorm reasons why people eat:
stress
hunger
sadness
boredom
loneliness
bonding
habit
curiosity
ritual
spiritual
aphrodisiac
manners
energy
tradition
survival
medicinal
These different reasons might form part of your food ideology. We might also ask, “Why do you eat what you eat?” Some possible answers:
morals
evolution
health
convenience
cost
status
entertainment
learning
culture
genes
These two lists will probably overlap somewhat — reasons why we eat will overlap with reasons explaining why we eat what we eat.
Being that this is the first post for this blog and the name of the blog is The Art of Simple Food, let’s talk about the ideology of simple food. What are the most simple foods?
The most simple food would be the absence of food: choosing not to eat. Next, after that, would be water. Thus water and fasting is where we will begin. Perhaps these are not foods as they don’t contain energy, but they still form an important part of my food ideology.
Choosing not-to-eat is an important concept to discuss. Similarly, choosing to drink water is similarly important — and simple.
Choosing not to eat might be a very good idea considering the circumstances and the food options available to you. It might be better not to eat.
In my second post, I will take up fasting, which doesn’t have to be radical, or spiritual, or a big deal. We can just see fasting as choosing not-to-eat, or choosing to abstain from food. This can be a rather mundane choice. For example, choosing to skip the food offered in a certain situation. But fasting, can be very powerful and educational. What can we learn from fasting? Why do people fast? How does fasting become a source of health? What promotes fasting? Who fasts?
In my third post, I will take up water — perhaps the most important, and the most simple — food. We can view water as a food — maybe the only food — that doesn’t contain energy. What is energy? Why do we need energy? Why do we need water? How does water help us? What can we do to make sure we’re getting enough water?
What else will this blog say? The food that I eat; the food I make for my family; food that may ancestors have eaten; food that other people eat, etc. This is a pretty open-ended blog, so there might be surprises. If I share recipes, they will be pretty simple ones. As the blog progresses, perhaps I’ll define my food ideology. For now, let’s begin by saying my food ideology is “simple food.”
I have a book called The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters. Certainly there will be some similarities between my food ideology and hers, but mine will be unique, just as yours is unique. In fact, we might refer to one’s food ideology as our food identity or our food religion. We might ask where our food identity comes from? Why do we eat what we eat?
See Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of Government.