Healthy lifestyle does not exclude good food
Anyone flipping through the Focus section lately might righteously accuse me of becoming obsessed with food. A research article on eating portions here, a story about the "freshman 15" there and this week Tech's newest chefs... What's going on? Is Focus losing its focus on anything that cannot be chewed, eaten and swallowed? Or am I turning into a food fanatic, and the biases of my appetite are spilling into my poor, unwitting section?
Readers, I can assure you, the answer is a very definite no. I am not obsessed. I do not measure every morsel I eat, nor do I TiVo the Food Network and dream of crème brulee...wait, crème brulee...caramelized sugar glaze, delicately flavored custard and delicious sweet goodness...where was I? Right, not obsessed.
As for that first accusation, Focus might have veered a little off course from its standard commitment to "the most interesting trends and issues on campus"-but what am I talking about? This is college, where any organization or event has to promise free pizza for any hope of a turnout, where ramen and late-night Chinese are even more necessary staples than calculus and physics. Is there any student at Tech who doesn't care about food, and if there is, where is he and when can we start breaking him down with a fast?
Food isn't just a concern for hungry college students, either. Seriously, do you even have to think about it? It's food-that catch-all item everyone learned to list under "needs" back in the first grade; it qualifies quite literally as the stuff of life. Food is everywhere. Turn on the TV and seven times out of 10 there's some commercial flashing images of sizzling steaks and slow-roasted potatoes. Walk outside and there's a McDonald's or Starbucks beckoning on every corner. We define entire countries by the foods they offer; we pepper our language with any and every palatable metaphor.
More than that, food brings people together. Meals are social occasions to catch up with family and friends or icebreakers for meeting strangers. There's nothing like bonding over a favorite dish ("You like peanut butter and banana sandwiches too? But everyone else thinks it's gross! I know, aren't they crazy?"), and boys, there's a reason why we girls enjoy being wined and dined. It's called not having to pay for our own food, which, come to think of it, isn't exactly on topic but still works as a dating perk. Ahem, just be a man and pay the bill. If we like you, we might just cover the tip.
The point is that no matter what the circumstance, whether you love it or hate it, we all eat. We are all food-obsessed. We only run into problems when we start to believe that food is bad for us, or more correctly, bad for our waistlines. There's nothing wrong with being health-conscious and watching what we eat. After all, it's important to take care of ourselves, to get decent servings of fruits and vegetables and not clog our arteries with fat.
However, there's a big difference between eating smart and eating crazy. In our skinny-models-obsessed culture, the pressure to be thin can be heavy. Every year a new dieting fad takes hold, every month a once-harmless and tasty food magically transforms into a dangerous enemy. First the protein in meat is bad, then the carbohydrates in bread. From everything that the experts are telling us, we might as well give up and eat grass. Oh drat, doctor so-and-so just announced cellulose causes exponential weight gain.
And the sad thing is, people listen. They run from one diet to another, take the newest "drop 10 pounds in a day" miracle pills, have their stomachs cut open and sucked out. They feel guilty about eating that extra piece of cake and starve themselves until they can't take it anymore and binge, after which they feel guilty and starve themselves again. Vicious, vicious cycle. How did we come to this? When can we stop pretending we don't like food and start eating like normal people?
Just think about all the food you've been giving up lately because (officially) you want to be more fit, but (honestly) you want to fit into that new dress. Chocolate truffles drizzled with more chocolate. Prime rib that melts in your mouth. Hot buttered biscuits fresh from the oven. Lemon pepper chicken fried to perfection. Anyone else hungry yet?
Forget about being a size 0. It's not nearly as important as getting enough to eat and being healthy. Anorexia isn't a good look these days anyway. As long as every meal doesn't consist of french fries and hamburgers, there's no reason why you can't enjoy eating (if that word induces bathroom scale panic and fear, think of it as not starving). Grab a friend and cook dinner or go out and try a new restaurant. Savor all the flavors that life has to offer. Like the good book says, eat, drink and be merry.
