The Joy Diet - my own take on Slow Food
I've been seeing more and more "sustainability diets" -- 100% Organic, The Food Stamp Diet, The 100-Mile Diet, even The 100-Yard Diet. Having just read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, my eyes are attuned to such things, and I've even been tempted to try one or the other of these culinary challenges.
But I'd rather invent my own. Why? Because many of these diets seem to miss the point by containing an air of moral superiority -- who can eat the most sustainably? As if there is a single, knowable answer. If the perfect sustainability diet becomes a formula you can follow without thinking in order to achieve a guilt-free lunch, how is it different from the weekly diet fad portrayed in the tabloids?
I can see it now: Lose 10 tons off your carbon footprint in just 10 days! Without going hungry!
The diet I am inventing contains the essential components that have meaning to me. I invite you to examine your own priorities and do what feels right to you. Here's what I want from my food: Joy. Not only the joy of eating something that tastes good or that I know is healthful for my body. I want to know that the food was provided to me with joy, by people who care about food, healthy living, and respecting the Earth. It's a lot like the Slow Food concept, but I'm using my own language.
We may choose a vegetarian diet to avoid cruelty to animals, but can we really feel good about eating vegetables from a farm that exploits Mexican laborers? In the Joy Diet, a strawberry picked in resentment by an underpaid illegal immigrant laborer would be shunned in favor of one picked by a person who sincerely cares about berries.
Other parts of the food supply chain matter too. I'd like to buy food from someone who smiles at me and genuinely hopes I enjoy it (say, the person at the farmer's market) than from a minimum-wage checkout clerk whose personhood has been diminished by the command-and-control environment of many large supermarket chains (this is not the clerk's fault, of course). And I'd like to eat food that was prepared lovingly by myself, a friend, or a dedicated chef, rather than mass-produced and put in a package identical to a million other such packages.
The Joy Diet is about eating food that was grown, sold, and cooked intentionally, for the purpose of nourishment and connection. This is a difficult diet to follow because such information is not always available (although it does favor items grown in your own garden and from smaller farms). We can never guarantee that every step of the chain contained that intentionality and joy, but we can do the best we can.
At the very least, I can assure that I am one step of that chain: When I sit down to eat, I can remember all the people who contributed to bringing that food to my plate, and I can have a brief moment of appreciation for their contribution toward keeping me alive for another day. Doing this, I assure that no meal contains zero joy.
When I started thinking about who follows this diet most closely, the answers were interesting. One group is obviously people like Barbara Kingsolver's family, who committed to eating food from their own area (and mostly their own farm) for an entire year. In most cases, they knew who had grown the food they were eating. Another group includes the Buddhist nuns to whom I offer a meal from time to time. Buddhist monks and nuns cannot buy or cook food-- everything they eat is donated by laypeople, and they eat just once a day (or sometimes twice, but never after midday). In other words, they exert no control over their food-- no organic, no local, no vegan, etc. And yet, everyone who gives them food is doing so out of desire to support their practice, out of devotion to the way they are living their lives. So they are always assured that two steps in the chain contain intentionality: Those giving the food, and themselves eating it. The rest of us just get the second one. But if we are diligent, we can aspire for more by buying from farmer's markets, choosing organic options, and other elements that might be found in more formulaic sustainability diets.
I feel that if people were committed to growing and eating food that is healthful and brings us joy to cook and serve, then many of the other problems with our food supply and food choices would resolve themselves. We would naturally stop overusing pesticides and nitrogen-based fertilizers, and would treat farm labor more humanely. We would cook more and rush our meals less. There is plenty of room for individuality in the Joy Diet-- no need to become a tofu-lover or give up dessert. Just pay attention.
I can say from experience that this way of eating has good results.
But I'd rather invent my own. Why? Because many of these diets seem to miss the point by containing an air of moral superiority -- who can eat the most sustainably? As if there is a single, knowable answer. If the perfect sustainability diet becomes a formula you can follow without thinking in order to achieve a guilt-free lunch, how is it different from the weekly diet fad portrayed in the tabloids?
I can see it now: Lose 10 tons off your carbon footprint in just 10 days! Without going hungry!
The diet I am inventing contains the essential components that have meaning to me. I invite you to examine your own priorities and do what feels right to you. Here's what I want from my food: Joy. Not only the joy of eating something that tastes good or that I know is healthful for my body. I want to know that the food was provided to me with joy, by people who care about food, healthy living, and respecting the Earth. It's a lot like the Slow Food concept, but I'm using my own language.
We may choose a vegetarian diet to avoid cruelty to animals, but can we really feel good about eating vegetables from a farm that exploits Mexican laborers? In the Joy Diet, a strawberry picked in resentment by an underpaid illegal immigrant laborer would be shunned in favor of one picked by a person who sincerely cares about berries.
Other parts of the food supply chain matter too. I'd like to buy food from someone who smiles at me and genuinely hopes I enjoy it (say, the person at the farmer's market) than from a minimum-wage checkout clerk whose personhood has been diminished by the command-and-control environment of many large supermarket chains (this is not the clerk's fault, of course). And I'd like to eat food that was prepared lovingly by myself, a friend, or a dedicated chef, rather than mass-produced and put in a package identical to a million other such packages.
The Joy Diet is about eating food that was grown, sold, and cooked intentionally, for the purpose of nourishment and connection. This is a difficult diet to follow because such information is not always available (although it does favor items grown in your own garden and from smaller farms). We can never guarantee that every step of the chain contained that intentionality and joy, but we can do the best we can.
At the very least, I can assure that I am one step of that chain: When I sit down to eat, I can remember all the people who contributed to bringing that food to my plate, and I can have a brief moment of appreciation for their contribution toward keeping me alive for another day. Doing this, I assure that no meal contains zero joy.
When I started thinking about who follows this diet most closely, the answers were interesting. One group is obviously people like Barbara Kingsolver's family, who committed to eating food from their own area (and mostly their own farm) for an entire year. In most cases, they knew who had grown the food they were eating. Another group includes the Buddhist nuns to whom I offer a meal from time to time. Buddhist monks and nuns cannot buy or cook food-- everything they eat is donated by laypeople, and they eat just once a day (or sometimes twice, but never after midday). In other words, they exert no control over their food-- no organic, no local, no vegan, etc. And yet, everyone who gives them food is doing so out of desire to support their practice, out of devotion to the way they are living their lives. So they are always assured that two steps in the chain contain intentionality: Those giving the food, and themselves eating it. The rest of us just get the second one. But if we are diligent, we can aspire for more by buying from farmer's markets, choosing organic options, and other elements that might be found in more formulaic sustainability diets.
I feel that if people were committed to growing and eating food that is healthful and brings us joy to cook and serve, then many of the other problems with our food supply and food choices would resolve themselves. We would naturally stop overusing pesticides and nitrogen-based fertilizers, and would treat farm labor more humanely. We would cook more and rush our meals less. There is plenty of room for individuality in the Joy Diet-- no need to become a tofu-lover or give up dessert. Just pay attention.
I can say from experience that this way of eating has good results.
3 Comments:
Zen Buddhism has elements of this as well. You already pointed out the nuns, but check the sesshin meditations and how the preparation and eating of the food is to be approached.
At the risk of a pun, this is a great post, lots of food for thought...
By BEG, at 10:04 AM
Thanks for pointing out the connection to Zen practice! Now that you say that, I am recalling my friend Abijah, who recently moved into a Zen center. He described the formal process for meals there-- the ritualized serving, eating, and bowl-cleaning techniques. The point of all the detail in Zen practice is really just to encourage mindfulness of actions, a very similar idea to what I was describing in this post.
My vipassana teacher started out in Zen, living in those types of practice communities for years. He noticed that once he moved away, he was suddenly aware of how much choice he had about very simple things like sitting in a chair or eating from a bowl. These things are prescribed in Zen settings, so that you can realize (perhaps later) the vast amount of choice you really have in any action. I thought that was quite a useful insight.
By Kim, at 6:48 AM
Wonderfully put. When I started reading this post I thought that "joy" would mean that you simply enjoy you meal. Your definition is not only something much bigger; it's a great summary of what makes good food. I'll remember this.
By Johnny, at 1:54 PM
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