We Are What We Eat

[su_note note_color=”#d5d5d5″ text_color=”#91201f”]The following is the Letter from the Editor for Volume 4, Issue 6 of Christ and Pop Culture Magazine: “Soul Food.” You can subscribe to Christ and Pop Culture Magazine by becoming a member and you’ll receive a host of other benefits as well.[/su_note]

At least three times day, most of us, if we are able, feed our bodies. Three times or more a day, we take time to fuel the system that allows us to live this life. Depending on what and how much we put in, our bodies run more or less efficiently.

The food we consume not only determines how well we live this life, it also expresses who we are. A person’s daily intake of calories and nutrients speaks to his or her culture, family tradition, habits, values, status, discipline, preferences, and weaknesses.

For example, this week’s menu would reveal my German–Yugoslavian heritage, because I made a big pot of my Grandpa’s Soup—a spicy chicken paprikash / goulash with potatoes, noodles, and dumplings. This starchy concoction It evokes memories of my grandfather standing over a bubbling pot and declaring it a good batch if it cleared the sinuses. My love for hearty soups and spicy foods is rooted here, along with the warmth of loved ones enjoying memories and meals around the same table.

Food speaks of who we are with echoes of where we came from, and whispers of where we are going. In this issue of Christ and Pop Culture Magazine, the feature articles and support pieces explore what we eat and why we eat it. Sarah Hudspeth kicks it off with her feature, “Great-Grandma’s Pickles”:

“We have all shed sweat and tears doing this thing we call living and have made it some days, have fallen others. I think when we taste a pickle, part of us toasts all the times in life when we enjoyed the best of the harvest even while we remember those times we were rubbed in salt, maybe even with open wounds burning. Pickles remind us that there is more that unites us than divides us. We all have tastes buds. We all have pickle stories. We may all have secret or not so secret family pickle recipes.”

Food creates a powerful familial bond that remains strong throughout our lives. But food also has the ability to form new friendships, drawing together unlikely people with dissimilar family histories. In “Although of Course You End up Eating Fast Food,” Dylan Lemert points to the unlikely friendship forged between David Lipsky (writer for Rolling Stone) and David Foster Wallace (author of Infinite Jest). Lemert explains:

“We witness as Lipsky and Wallace warm up to each other, despite being writers from different ends of the creative spectrum, that there’s a wonderful tension that exists from these two being at once brothers-in-arms while maintaining very different critical definitions of the world.

“However, one thing in particular is the unlikely catalyst for the budding relationship between the two writers, and it’s something which we’re led to believe partly defines the genius of David Foster Wallace: a penchant for junk food.”

Although Wallace and Lipsky found common ground in junk food, there is a growing bond among those who favor more healthful choices. Clean eating trends have forged many a friendship in recent years. But it has also produced its fair share of division and confusion, as adherents bicker over what is organic or natural. Abby Hummel helps us sort it out in “Faith and Fear in the Food Wars: Biotechnology’s Role in Redeeming the Cursed Ground”:

“Is organic food healthier? Do pesticides cause cancer? Are genetically-engineered foods safe? There are plenty of people saying yes, plenty of people saying no, and lots of us questioning what to buy at the store because of it. Those who aren’t ‘eating clean’ or ‘going organic’ often feel guilty about it. Who hasn’t heard about food sourcing and wondered how to choose the best food? What shopper hasn’t felt pressured to pay more for a product that is marketed to seem healthier? Without knowing much about science or agriculture, most people are going into this food war blind.”

There is an added complexity in food choice for the Christian. Do the foods we consume honor the body, God’s temple? Do those foods honor the community in which they are grown and produced? Are we becoming food snobs when so many worldwide struggle to have even one meal a day?

If we are what we eat, questions like these are important to wrestle out, as they shape our daily lives and the lives of others.

—Erin Straza

Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne. Check out Seth’s graphic novel and comic review site, Good Ok Bad.