Flirting with health

Last week I experienced the foodie equivalent of backsliding. I had just made it through three consecutive weeks of nightly gastronomic indulgences, and I was starting to gross myself out. My pants were tight, my skin had turned zitty, and I felt debauched and lethargic. My body seemed to be insisting that I return to a more puritanical diet, eat only three meals a day, and get some exercise. Looking back on it, I can only blame the ensuing lapse in my typically excessive behavior on Satan himself, who tempted me with the prospect of a moderate, healthy Marin County lifestyle. You know, the kind in which I would rise early to go jogging with my golden retriever, Dakota, whose coat is shiny and glossy because she eats only holistic dog food. I’m so ashamed.

Because I live in a hippie town in California, I have unrestricted access to some of the most quackish and ridiculous New Age theories, products and practitioners the country has to offer. To make use of this unique opportunity, I decided to spend a few days pursuing a self-constructed detox program in the hopes of purging myself of the previous weeks’ foie gras, oysters, wine and gourmet cookies that surely must have started clogging up my guts. At first I planned to buy one of those “cleansing” kits available at natural grocery stores everywhere, but frightening pictures and triumphant testimonials recounting the extreme, explosive successes enjoyed by other satisfied customers scared me away for good.

Instead, I opted to drink as much juice as possible and eat veggie and vegan stuff for a few days. I would buy only organic food, walk everywhere, and keep an open mind. I leafed through the local New Age paper for ideas, and grew ever more bewildered by the pages of listings for colonic hydrotherapists, re-mothering sessions and animal communicators. Apparently, because I don’t filter my tap water or ingest large quantities of cayenne, lemon juice and flaxseed oil every day, I am doomed to die an untimely and lonely death, veins choked with butter and lungs blackened by environmental pollutants.

Fearfully, I went to the local organic grocery store to get a few supplies for dinner. The bearded, matted-looking guy in front of me at the check-out stand was buying a small packet of shriveled red things.

ME (suspiciously): “What are those?”
NEW AGE GUY: “Goji berries. The difference in vitality you’ll feel from eating them is just amazing.” (I’m not making it up; he actually said this.)
ME (even more suspiciously): “What do they taste like?”
NEW AGE GUY: “Like raisins, but tangier.”

A pause. I hate raisins.

NEW AGE GUY (smiling mischievously): “Apparently they also do wonders for the female sex drive. Like, crazy things will start happening if you eat enough.”
ME (mildly repulsed): “I find that kind of scary.”
NEW AGE GUY: “Don’t be scared. This is Fairfax. Anything goes in Fairfax, man!”

Apparently. This encounter made me ponder my relationship with food. I don’t judge what I eat in terms of what it will do for my health, and how it will smooth or enhance the functioning of my various systems. I judge it by whether it tastes good. It’s a big plus if it’s not going to actively contribute to my swift demise, but in general it’s not often a determining factor. I suppose this lack of concern for my longevity is the privilege of the young and stupid.

The New Aged, on the other hand, seem to approach food in terms of its capacity to deliver various physical results. It’s more of a vehicle than a pleasurable sensory experience. This reminds me of Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust, where the fashionable characters eat yogurt in the name of health even though they all think it’s disgusting. It becomes this symbol for the joylessness and emptiness of modern life, this slightly repulsive food that everybody chokes down in the name of nutrition.

That night, I made a big vat of vegan stuff. The results are below, and I must admit that the meal totally hit the spot.

It included a pot of Himalayan red rice, a spinach and tofu stir fry with organic oranges, ginger and garlic, and some lovely asparagus sprinkled with gomasio. Also, I finally bit the bullet and bought a squirt bottle of Bragg’s. Six years had passed since I savored my last Bragg’s-soaked bowl of burnt brown rice in the dining co-op of my hippie college, and I was feeling nostalgic. Like Proust’s madeleine, its comforting saltiness brought back a flood of co-operative memories. Sadly, most of them involved culinary atrocities that are too painful to repeat here.

So, for a few days, I went over to the dark side. I took hikes. I drank carrot juice.

I worried about toxins, and tried to breathe deeply, and ate the freakiest, most hardcore cereal that I could find, Ezekiel 4:9. This is the kind of cereal whose box scrupulously avoids any mention of cow’s milk when discussing possible preparations, presumably because milk is assumed to be such a festering, deadly concoction of hormones and pesticides that no sane person could even entertain the slightest possibility of ingesting it.

And after a few days of this regime, I did feel a little better. A little lighter, a little calmer. So today, I ate a cookie for breakfast, and you know what? It tasted good. And that made me feel great.