Tag: Food

The Death of the Dining Room

Articles & Essays, Food

Eating at table should not be equated with formality and outmoded etiquette. Its main association should be conviviality. We sit around a table, but in front of the TV. We eat together at the table, but merely at the same time elsewhere. Even when eating alone, however, dispensing with a dining table comes at a cost. When we have our meals while doing other things we are not eating, we are merely feeding. We cease paying attention to what we are ingesting and our food becomes mere fuel.

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On taking food seriously

Articles & Essays, Food

It is absurd to claim that anything that is not essential to our survival is a “luxury” we should not be concerned about. This is not a humane viewpoint, but a deeply anti-humanist one. Why, after all, are we so concerned that many people do not have the necessities of life? Not because we think that mere survival is the purpose of existence. We want people to have food, shelter, health and education so that they can thrive and flourish. To put it another way, we want our “middle-class indulgences” to be available to everyone.

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The philosophy of dieting

Food

I sit here now humbled by both my personal failings and the inherent difficulties all humans have in taking charge of the one thing of which they are supposedly sovereign: their own bodies. My only consolation is that humility, so long as it does not descend into pointless self-loathing, is a virtue. No one becomes a lesser human being by becoming more aware of their limitations. While it would be wrong to become apathetic in the face of them, it is only by fully knowing the limits of our powers that we can make the most of the ones we have, and perhaps even learn how to increase them.

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