Eating Doesn’t Add Up

But Who’s Counting

We ingest something that contains energy in one form, which our body converts to energy that it uses to continue to exist. That’s food. It keeps us alive and able to find more food. A basic and fundamental necessity. Not a luxury. But we’ve certainly turned it into one.

Farming and food industries produce millions of items, packaged by material and design industries, delivered by transportation industries to retail industries, steps or fingertips away.

We’ve turned a gas-station fill-up into a Disney World yearlong pass.

My steak grazed 500 miles away, salmon swam 1,000 miles away, pineapple and spices swayed 50,000 miles away - all now in my kitchen, stored, refrigerated, mixed, heated, cooled, sliced, diced, ground, braised, massaged, kneaded, mixed, marinated, and trimmed…. to be plated and silver spooned into my mouth.

We’ve hacked nature to tickle every sense - curating animals, breeding plants, inventing foods to create every imaginable food-related experience. The packaging seduces and dazzles. Utensils clink and shine. Eye candy of shiny bread crust, glossy chocolate striping down vanilla ice cream, green pesto streaking across glistening buttery pasta. The sounds - frying sizzle, fizzy tickly hiss of soda and ice, knife thunk, bowl clink, silverware jingle. And, oh, the smells. Vanilla whisps, cinnamon rolls, caramelizing garlic, fresh bread, grilled meat, roasted oily garlic mushroom tomato…

Your mouth salivates in anticipation. Your stomach hungers. Nature and evolution respond, producing a plethora of senses ready to fire up their tentacles to engage with endless nuances of texture, taste, temperature, and color.

This all to propel you to enthusiastically - and finally - take a morsel and fork it between your lips and onto your tongue, to start the process of actually eating.

As the food hits your tongue, other parts of your mouth sense its flavor’s signatures. Your teeth grind it; your tongue presses it to the roof of your mouth. Your saliva liquifies it, coating all surfaces of your oral orifice, which tingles and explodes with sensory delight, savoring the taste orchestra, cheek to cheek, palate to undercarriage.

Then, the coup de grace: The swallow.

You push the food to the back of your throat, and down, depositing it into the esophagus, flipping a switch deep in your throat’s tunnel, signaling the brain, “OK, now you may release serotonin” the ultimate feel-good drug we produce for ourselves as reward for job well done.

We don’t fully reward ourselves for sight, smell or even taste and feel of food.

That whole maelstrom of activity, every aspect of the food chain, funnels to the eat, to get the energy packets in the gut. Swallow. Then you get the ultimate reward.

Just how much of eating’s pleasure lives in the swallow? Are the incremental steps to the swallow rewarding in themselves?

Well, try chewing, savoring and then spitting it all out, rather than swallowing.

Your body will NOT thank you.

And here’s the kicker. Once my mouth and gullet get their few seconds of fame and pleasure? The food which all those industries, processes, and people accumulatively spent a year getting to my mouth? Gratefulness and admiration disappear almost instantly. Keep on moving, sir. I gave at the office. I’ll want nothing to do with it anymore. Wham bam thank you ma’am, and close the door on your way out.

We collectively spend endless resources for 20 seconds of personal glee, so that my body dutifully converts it to energy mush with its gastric juices, and…

I’ll then make believe I never knew it. Keep your distance, stranger. You’re familiar with burps, farts, feces and vomit, yes?

“Oh, c’mon party pooper,” you counter. “There’s so much pleasure before the swallow. The sights, the sounds, the anticipation – all part of eating. It’s not just the swallow.”

Really? The way I see it, everything just gets us to the swallow.

Wait. No. I love shopping for the food. Preparing it. Say very few. But even those that do, most people engage profusely with food for the brief swallow.

Think about that the next time you’re all ramped up for a delicious meal – even one that lives up to its hype. As you savor the sight and smells, and chew and marinate in the orchestral taste dancing in your mouth, be aware of how much time you’re actually tasting and eating the food, and the brief, culminating swallow, compared to everything involved that brought you the coupla seconds of pleasure. Do the math. All those farms, factories, trucks, Michelin stars, shopping and prepping… all for a chew and swallow.

Our evolved food experience is almost a con game. Certainly, a wildly disproportionate effort-to-pleasure ratio. Our internal boss says dance; we ask, how high? And boy, do we get into it, not realizing how much we’ve blown the command out of proportion, how far we’ll go to eke out another sliver of delight, how little we’re getting paid. We complicate the simplicity of life to the absurd, making it temporarily delicious. A fleeting thrill makes it worth it. Or so we tell ourselves. Unless we pay attention.

Bite, chew, swallow. That’s it!? My actual turn is only 20 seconds?

And then we do it all over again.

We don’t pay attention, We don’t do the math. We don’t analyze.

We. Don’t. Care.

We blind spot that the whole point is the swallow and it’s just an energy packet.

Is it habit? Culture? Wiring? An addiction to serotonin?

Dunno. But, pass me a slice of that delicious looking pizza.