Soul Food

Michele Marr

o7 “They are as sick that surfeit with too much as they are that

starve with nothing.”

-- The Merchant of Venice 1.2.5-6, Nerissa to Portia

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As you read this, I’ll be chowing down at a family shindig on Fish

River, a threadlike tributary off Weeks Bay in the Alabama delta. There’s

sure to be some barbecue and shrimp, maybe some oysters, soft shell crabs

and catfish. There might could be some file gumbo, fried okra or green

tomatoes. Corn bread, yams, a buffet of covered dishes, watermelon,

berries, homemade ice cream and the good Lord only knows what else to

fill in the thin spots.

This, the heart of Dixie, is where I learned to eat. I may find things

have changed, but while I was growing in the Deep South, sharing meals

was the region’s number one recreational activity. Hunting and fishing

were close seconds -- the obvious connection of these two to the first

being no coincidence.

Eating, and eating well, gave me my first taste of belonging and

praise. From the earliest age, I could hold my own at any table. I was

never a picky eater like my sister who was reared outside of Dixieland. I

ate tomatoes -- whole like an apple -- with as much relish as most any

kid eats candy.

But I also ate fried pork chops, biscuits and gravy. I ate Moon Pies

and butter and sugar sandwiches on white, Sunshine Bakery bread. I ate

collard greens with bacon drippings and grits swimming in butter. I could

almost swoon for a T-bone steak.

I never tired of eating and would eat just about anything, and as much

of it, as was put in front of me. Kinfolk would say, “That child can

eat!” that way you would say, “That Roy Jones can throw a punch!” It was

high praise. And it made me feel like part of something, something

special, in a way that nothing else ever has since.

Few of my kin were overweight -- which is truly surprising given the

place that food had in our lives. Looking back through snapshots, I

wasn’t overweight myself until my teen years.

Baby pictures show a curly-headed cherub with three knees, but by the

age of 3 or 4 normal legs stand beneath profusions of petticoats and

bouffant skirts. It wasn’t until the age of 14 or 15 that my intensely

emotional relationship with food began to take its toll.

The misery of being overweight in our appearance-conscience society

cannot, I think, be easily exaggerated. I know the old saws about the fat

and happy and the jolly and fat, but I’ve never known one corpulent soul

for whom it was true.

While taboo after taboo -- alcoholism, living together out of wedlock,

girlie magazines, divorce, abortion (the list goes on) -- has been

vindicated as either an illness, an addiction or something perfectly fine

in the first place, obesity is still a disgrace. Ask anyone you know who

is both hefty and honest. Listen to what people say. Recently a friend of

mine described her son’s new girlfriend to me, “She is so sweet and very

bright even if she is so fat.”

Recently there has been quite a bit in the news about our world’s

increasing numbers of obese children. They are not just in the U.S. They

are in every westernized province. The surgeon general has called

childhood obesity epidemic.

This last week, within days of each other, one newspaper ran an

opinion piece, which lamented, in “an abundant and permissive world,

gluttony has gotten a good name.” As an antidote, the author purposed

that we as a society “re-stigmatize the once-sinful act of excessive

eating.”

Four days later a food section in another daily paper covered an event

promoting a new nutrition and cookbook that aims to help parents help

their kids develop a healthy relationship with food. The book doesn’t

mention sin or stigmatization. Instead, its author describes her book as

“an irreverent guide to understanding nutrition and feeding your family

well.” Her notion is that it doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to

hurt.

And maybe it doesn’t if you start early. My husband has an effortless

and healthy relationship with food. He enjoys food, but he doesn’t abuse

it. He eats foods he likes. He’ll try foods he doesn’t like. He eats

until he’s full, and then he stops. To him it seems as natural as

breathing.

For me it is a daily struggle. The large family meals and high praise

for eating hearty are gone. Many of those good hostesses, cooks,

fishermen, farmers and hunters in whose praise I delighted and in whose

family I was truly kith and kin have long been dead. But, even when

alone, perhaps especially when alone, I can eat, and eat too much,

because some irrational part of my mind believes food itself can somehow

restore the familiar comfort of belonging and the joy of worth I felt so

long ago.

For me it has helped to stigmatize overeating, to see it as a sinful

act. It has helped me rely on the more rational part of my mind in order

to gain self-control.

A friend gave me a little book called, “Saint Augustine’s Prayer

Book.” Small as the book is, it gives an extensive account of “the seven

deadly sins:” pride, anger, envy, covetousness, lust, sloth and gluttony.

The book unfolds each sin in such a way it is impossible to deny one’s

guilt. Yet its real virtue lies in is its ability to make one want to

change one’s ways -- more out of a desire for well-being, than out of

shame.

Gluttony, I read, is the neglect of bodily health. It includes

overeating, but also, not getting sufficient rest, recreation and

exercise. Guilty. Guilty indeed.

I began to see the damage I was doing to myself, and to my

relationships, through my lack of self-control. I began to see my

compulsive eating as a thief in nurturing clothes. Seeing this, I could

say to myself when tempted, “Don’t be tricked!”

It doesn’t work every time I sit down to food in front of me, but it

works most of the time. And it makes food more enjoyable, not less.

Because, as anyone who ever earnestly wrestled with a vice can tell you,

anything you take pleasure in offers you more satisfaction when you are

in control of it, rather than it being in control of you.

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* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for as

long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7

[email protected].

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