Respect your food.

Anyone who tells you hunger is a physical need and not an emotion has never been hungry. It eats into a poor society, and overrules all other needs, ideals and motivations.
And yet, in our American land of plenty, we do not teach our children to respect food.
We neither teach, nor learn, the true value of food. Most of us want too much, eat too much - the more convenient, processed and fatty the better - and then throw the rest away. No wonder we are fat, unhappy and unhealthy.

We are missing the fundamental principles usually taught in third world, poorer countries. In these societies, sharing is not primarily a magnanimous self sacrificing gesture. It is more about the other -- the sharing of resources, and food in particular, is the giving of the essential to another.

Much emphasis is placed on respecting one's body in this culture. The value of the body God gave you is touted in every women's magazine, and is the sage-like affirmation behind many an Oprah show. Yet I would guess that in many instances it is not that we are disrespecting our bodies, but rather our food. After all, how many extremely overweight women are beautifully manicured, coiffed and carefully made up?
What if these women percieved a medium sized plate of fresh vegetables, slice of roast beef and a scoop of rice as a treat of nutrition and plenty? What if a soda was regarded as a fizzy treat for extremely hot weather, tap water the norm for thirst? What if an orange and a thick slice of bread was universally considered a substantial and satisfying lunch? These are the truths of third world countries.

Our disrespect allows us to eat alone, quickly, encapsulated in the semi-privacy of our oversized cars. We eat in secret, surreptitiously. We should be eating with friends, family or colleagues, when relaxing, with pleasure and a hint of celebration. We should share our food, divide what we have to give enough to all, and in the process we will nourish our souls and bodies.
Twinkies swallowed on your way home from work in your car is disrespectful. This is not enjoying cake, but guiltily cramming a cellophane wrapped chemical concoction down your throat. Make a chocolate cake at home once a month, share it with a handful of good friends or family and talk, laugh, exclaim how good it is, taste the chocolate and love that went into it. There will be no guilt, there will be joy, there will be enough and not too much. There will not be unnecessary seconds.

Our first evening in the Bay Area, we shared a multitude of Chinese take-out boxes with a small group of friends. There was three times more food than we could have eaten, and afterwards, our hostess opened the trashcan and dumped half eaten containers of food into it. I was stunned at the waste.
The following day we picnicked in a park with a few delectable clamshelled and paper bagged treats from a nearby Whole Foods. After lunch, I wrapped up the untouched leftovers and automatically offered them to a group of homeless men lounging in the sun nearby. My friendly offering was greeted with contempt and chilly refusals. I was chagrined, embarrassed and confused. Was I supposed to throw it away? We took it home for later.

At Jenna's school there is a bin for recycling plastic bottles, which the elementary school kids dutifully use as trained, but they dump full trays of heavily subsidized cafeteria meals into enormous trashcans. There goes unopened milk, cellophane wrapped burritos and the obligatory healthy piece of fruit that everyone puts on their tray and no-one eats. The custodian appears when the bell rings, and lugs out the bags to the dumpster. I feel sad and ashamed. I remember my evening rituals in my home in Cape Town.

Every evening after dinner, I would scan the contents of my kitchen and sort food into plastic bags. Left over bread in one bag, left over dinner and scraps in another. I would double bag it, and leave it in the shade outside my front gate. The predawn scavengers, mostly women and children, would slip through the streets, rustling the bags and taking the best scraps. The rest would be left for the next wave of hungry.

It would serve us well to remember the value of good food. That does not mean finishing a huge plate of food in front of us that we do not really want, because the children in Africa are starving. It is to remember to share, take as much as we need and no more, because the children in Africa are starving.