Food: The unending conversation

When you boil it all down, there are really only three things that matter in human life:  faith, reproduction, and food.

When it comes to discussing these three things — the only three things that matter in human life, mind you — there are wild inconsistencies in the whens and hows and how-oftens (a word I just made up).

For example, discussing our faith during the course of a normal work day in a typical office setting has been so thoroughly discouraged by mainstream American society that it’s practically taboo.  There is no quicker way to drive away uncomfortable co-workers and initiate a visit from somebody in HR.

The discussion of reproduction (okay, sex) is usually reserved for the OB’s office, private moments behind closed doors under the encouragement of boxed wine and late-night Showtime, or the most universally accepted location:  under the monkey bars during 6th-grade recess.

This leaves food.  I’m convinced that the amount of time and energy devoted to the daily discourse regarding what we stuff into our face far outweighs any other subject in Western society.  It’s all anybody is talking about.  What’s for breakfast, what’s for lunch, what’s for dinner?  Did you hear about the new Zaxby’s that’s opening up on Dickerson Road?  Oh, I love these new Lean Cuisines!  Oh my gosh, I could never eat chicken livers!  What are we feeding the kids tonight?  Shoot, I forgot to pick up fresh garlic for the spaghetti sauce!  Have you tried that new Breyers’ flavor? And on, and on, and on…

It’s also what we spend most of our money on, and how we’ve found ourselves the most obese country on the planet, by the way.

For these reasons, I propose we do what they do in science fiction movies:  create one “superfood” that can be processed in such a way that it can be delivered via roadside pumping stations and kiosks and provided free of cost.  That way, we can move on to productive conversations, we won’t have to worry about what’s for supper tonight, we won’t have to take second jobs to pay for Mexican Night Out with the family, and we can use food as it was originally intended:  as fuel for our bodies.

There, problem solved.

OK, maybe we could discuss red-eye gravy and grits, but that’s where I draw the line…!