Thoughts on Food
As noted in the last Rambling Tale about Appreciation in order to have a truly sweet life one needs to look beyond the superficial appearances of things and appreciate the origins of things and their connection to you. However, one of the things that makes me a little sad is that everything I have to eat is the dead body of something. Indeed, the corn flakes which I mentioned previously are made from seeds of thousands of corn plants. While many people may not feel much of a connection to corn plants, compared to the fundamental form of life on our planet, bacteria, which are our trillion somethingth cousins about a trillion times removed1, plants like corn are practically our brothers and sisters (as they only a billionth or so cousins and less than a billion times removed). I get past that view by considering that all things that live must die and it the quality of their life that matters. Indeed, rather than thinking of myself as eating dead things and producing disgusting waste products (e.g. food is good and excrement is bad), I am simply a part of the cycle of life. The waste matter of plants2 is the food (carbohydrates and fatty acids) and gases (oxygen) used by creatures3 to live. In turn the waste matter of creatures (and bacteria which feed on these wastes) is the water, carbon dioxide, and other chemicals which plants use along with sun light as food4. Rather than being disgusted with my having to eat the dead bodies of plants and creatures as food, I like to consider them as gifts of life from my near and dear relatives and consider my own life as a gift of life to the plants. My own personal fantasy is that when I die my body should be chopped up and fed to pigs (as they fed me through much of my life), but that is illegal in our society (and for many good reasons). However, it is quite acceptable to have my body reduced to ashes (which speeds the process of becoming plant food) and then my ashes could be spread over corn fields, feeding the corn which can feed cattle, pigs, chickens and people. Wouldn't that be woderful! I like to imagine that all the food I eat is a gift of love from all the plants and animals which lived and died for my benefit. In turn I like to dedicate my own life to providing food for these plants and then animals as a return gift of love. When I eat I like to feel a connection to all the plants and animals which lived for my benefit, celebrating their life and expressing my appreciation for the sacrifice they made for my benefit. It is through acknowledging and celebrating my connection to all the life around me that I make my life sweeter. __________________________________1 Counting generations of bacteria is somewhat difficult in that they multiply by dividing and it is hard to say which is the original and which the offspring. To count generations you need to conclude that the original 'died' and two new offspring resulted. However, an alternative is to say that they are both the orginal (and that is consistent with their form of sex where they merge and exchange protoplasm). If you follow that alternative then we are all just colonies of that original bacteria which is pretty much immortal with colonies starting and dying, but the totality practically indestructible.
2 Plants are multi-celled eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus) which have chloroplasts to convert light (generally from the sun) into useful saved energy.
3 Creatures are multi-celled eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus) but without chloroplasts to provide energy, instead relying on mitochondira to convert the saved energy from plants into useful energy.
4 I myself suspect that the Ice Ages which we have been in for the last million years or so were caused by many hundreds of millions of years of multicellurar plants producing carbon which was not properly metabolized by the counter balancing multicellurar creatures and produced so many fossil fuels. However, as we 'consume' (or return to the cycle of life) those fossil fuels, that should be sufficient to put an end to the current cycle of Ice Ages and return the Earth to more normal temperatures (before the Ice Ages which are a quite recent anomaly).
This page was last updated on September 1, 2008