The Guilt of Eating Food for Taste

Pollan’s article “Our National Eating Disorder” discusses the infatuation America’s culture has with cutting carbs, calories, and fat. We are anxious eaters who no longer depend on taste and tradition but instead stress about eating for sake of good health, which is ironic considering America has some of the highest obesity rates and dietary issues in the world. In America, we treat food similar to a science experiment, continuously discovering microscopic “poisonous” ailments in our food that lead to a greater risk of diabetes, heart failure, or weight gain. Because we consistently find our food flawed due to unhealthy ingredients or production, we have become obsessed with health and looking good in a culture that stresses physical appearance. Other causes of our “healthy” obsession include the Omnivore’s dilemma, a wide variety of choices, a lack of tradition instilled in America alone, and the guilt accompanied by overindulging in fattening food.

What I found most interesting was the comparisons between America and other cultures like French and Italian. Many Americans look to France and Italy as culinary utopias due to the taste and tradition involved in their dishes. This is an accurate statement because a lot or their foods originated from that spot. America however acts more as a “melting pot” of cultures, lacking their own traditional foods other than items like hamburgers and Spam. Other cultures have a more relaxed, social relationship with food while Americans use food to become skinnier and the pleasure of food is less related with enjoying the food through our senses and more about the pleasures of looking good and being healthy.

Like all of American culture, I also buy and choose my food according to health, and when I eat food for the taste, I often feel guilt and a strong desire to work it all off at the gym. Through pressure from peers, advertisements, and the media, being healthy is not an option, it is a mandatory lifestyle all should try to adapt to.