i'm telling you, i'm telling you.

I try to mind my own business because I firmly believe that we are given one life to live and we should live it instead of butting in on someone else's. Like, for serious. I don't understand why people are so anxious to live my life for me when they have their own lives to live, you know? I spent a lot of time in philosophy classes in college so I think about this stuff more than any person should, but that's how I feel.

Anyhow.

If I ever have an opinion about what someone else should do with themselves, it's usually my own insecurity rearing its ugly head. Most of the time it shows up in the form of jealousy or condescension or anger, but underneath it all is insecurity. With that insight in mind, I usually reserve my comments (but not my judgment) knowing full well that I most likely have some sort of underlying issue with the topic at hand. That being said, I've mulled over this issue for almost a week now and it's eating me up inside to try to squash it when I'm almost certain that I'm right and not just for reasons of superiority.

(Jeez, I feel too much pressure from all this buildup.)

The issue: treating food as treats.

When I was younger I used to complain to my parents that we bought generic food. There were never Doritos in our house, only nacho cheese tortilla chips. As a kid, I wanted to fit in but it seemed impossible because the juice we kept in the fridge had the store name on the label instead of Juicy Juice or Tropicana. Conformity almost ruined my childhood until my dad told me that food is not an investment, it's not worth spending more money for what the package says when the stuff inside is all the same. To be fair, he sort of had a point, but his very declarative statement of "food is not an investment" is an argument I'd be willing to take up on another day. Onward.

I always hung on to this idea that food is not an investment (in the MONETARY sense, it certainly has a different meaning if we're talking about health and nutrition) and therefore it's wasteful to spend money where you don't have to. At the grocery store, I always wanted the brand of carrots with Bugs Bunny on the packaging, but a carrot is a carrot is a carrot no matter the spokesperson. You can't eat the packaging so there's no sense in paying extra for it to rot in the trash, so my dad says. I guess what my dad was trying to impart on me was that food isn't special, you have to eat to get through the day and there's no sense in getting all worked up over it. It's like breathing and blinking and sleeping: unavoidable, non-negotiable, and uncomplicated.

I carry that notion with me to this day, having realized over the years that food (as delicious as it can be sometimes) will always, without fail, turn into shit. Evolution is THAT good. There are HEALTH reasons to spend more money on food (such as organic) that I wholeheartedly support, but for the most part I do believe in the bottom line when it comes to picking brand name versus generic. Thinking of food as a necessity rather than a commodity has integrated itself so deeply in my thought processes that a conversation with a dear friend came to a screeching halt the other day when she mentioned her new diet plan.

I don't know the specifics of it, but the gym she recently joined has her on a program of strict eating with "cheat days" periodically thrown in. The program seems to have some successful effect (but please don't ask me to comment on that because I DO have an opinion and it is most likely unfavorable) and my friend has lost several stubborn pounds in the process. Yay. My problem with this plan, and all diets in general, is the forbidden list.

FOOD IS NOT SPECIAL, but the moment you disallow an item or a food group is the moment it becomes appealing. The only reason people LOVE pasta is because it's a "bad" food, but if you actually allowed yourself to experience pasta as it is you would know that it's not that great. Neither is bread. Or cheese. Or chocolate. Or ice cream. Or any other edible that has been deemed a diet abomination. The only truly satisfying component found in indulging in such items is the rush of knowing that you're breaking the rules, in which case... go run a red light instead and save yourself the calories.

My friend spent her single allotted "cheat day" binge eating raw cookie dough and egg nog, and as much as I disapprove of how she chose to imbibe her daily calories, my main concern is the pending emotional fallout. Mixing emotions and food is exactly how eating disorders begin, and I'm not saying that my friend will suffer from an eating disorder, but you'll have a hard time talking her out of another cookie dough binge next time her emotions go unchecked. From now on, she will remember egg nog as a happy thing and the feeling she had while breaking her diet rules will come rushing back next time there's a glass of egg nog in her proximity. It's rebellious. It's dangerous.

The entire concept of a "cheat day" is a dead ringer for positive reinforcement in conditioning, a process best used on dogs. DOGS. We are not dogs, we should not have treats. Sadly, the same behavioral processes that have trained my puppies to expect food at certain stimuli also apply to humans and I think that's very scary and very sad.

So the issue at hand is the complications of using food as treats, and there is a very simple solution: with the exception of life threatening food allergies, no person shall create a list of "bad" or "forbidden" foods and instead be open to the whimsy of one's gastrointestinal desires.

You would be surprised what you're not craving when you open the floodgates. The moment I stopped fretting about bread and cheese and pasta was the moment I realized that I didn't really want them in the same way I had lusted over them before. And what a world of good that did :)