You do
not live just to eat... You also live to enjoy all that life can
offer. Eating is just one of the activities that gives our lives
meaning.
You
eat in order to survive of course, but everyone to some degree lives
to eat too because eating brings us pleasure. We
are all hedonists to some degree even if we do not like to admit it.
If you
are a happy person, you tend to enjoy eating and sharing a meal. If
you are miserable, you tend to make eating, and everything else, a
mundane necessity.
A
three-star restaurant is high art appealing to all our senses (the
only form of art to do so)! What greater pleasure than a good
restaurant from time to time? What worse torture than a slimming
diet?!
However,
enjoying food does not mean eating indiscriminately; you can
have a well-balanced diet and can (should) eat healthily. And you
do not have to give in to temptation as regards food, despite the
plethora of adverts inciting us to eat more, different, new...
Food is a daily pleasure
especially shared with the family or with workmates, but it is also
necessary for special occasions: parties, weddings, etc. Food is all
about sharing and creating or maintaining social bonds; without food,
no social life, and with no social life, no meaning to life at all...
Some
people say that for them eating is not a pleasure. These people often
have eating disorders; they are unhappy and they make eating (or not eating) a means
to torture themselves...
Some people say that it
is immoral to consider eating a pleasure when there are so many
people who go hungry in the world. This is self-righteous codswallop!
What is immoral is that a billion people do not have enough to eat
and that we do not do anything about it, not the fact that people who
enjoy food refuse to feel guilty about enjoying it. What is shameful
is that so many are reduced to survival conditions in a world of
plenty. In a desperate way, they also live to eat...
We work to earn money, to
have our own home and all the other comforts, including food in
adequate amounts. Once you have satisfied basic needs though, you
then need to find more to give life meaning. Cooking is surely one of
the most creative activities to feed not just the body but also the
imagination?
Our world is overflowing
with flavors; it is up to you to discover them! In France we have
elevated food to a form of art, it is even our "raison
d'être"! Why do so
many tourists come here? To share our culture, which is essentially
all about sharing the best food and wine in an idyllic setting...
Is it not wrong to say we
eat just in order not to die? Are we animals ingurgitating foodstuff?
No! Enjoying food is, like laughter, what makes us human. So, eat,
drink and be merry, because life is too short!
