Stupid Food Tricks
As a student of human nature, as well as a de-facto health/nutrition advocate, I’ve always been intrigued by the way our society views food. In many ways, our food choices and eating behaviors are increasingly divorced from the reality of what food is, and what eating is supposed to accomplish.
I’m not trying to be a killjoy: in fact, I’m a firm believer in “eat, drink and be merry.” Food has a sensual side, and I’ve always made room for some indulgences, both in my selection of foods, as well as the ways I eat them. Food also plays important social roles: put 10 people in a room, and you have a group; add hors d’oeuvres, and you’ve got a party. Works for me.
But what I find peculiar are the bizarre, virtually non-nutritive uses – and abuses – of food. These range from the mundane (i.e., emotional eating and obsessive food rituals) to the ridiculous (such as competitive eating, and the creation of various food monstrosities such as gigantic sandwiches or chocolate hotel rooms). The way we view food would leave our stone age ancestors scratching their heads and wondering just WTF is wrong with us.
Yet another example of this appeared on my radar screen this morning, from a rather unlikely source. As I was puttering around in the kitchen in search of something to stoke my blood sugar with, John called to me from the living room: “Mike Nelson’s going on an all-bacon diet.”
“Whuh?” was my semi-hypoglycemic reply.
For those of you who have no idea who Mike Nelson is, he’s the former head writer/star of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” – one of my all-time favorite cult-classic TV shows. First time I saw the show, I thought the premise (a guy trapped on a satellite with two robots, cracking wise about the bad movies they’re forced to watch as part of a mind-control experiment) was hopelessly stupid, but the jokes were first rate.
What the heck…here’s a sample:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJKtN_ceHkQ]
The show’s defunct now, but Mike (plus MST3K alums Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy) have extended the concept to RiffTrax – inexpensive downloadable “riffs” you can sync to popular movies. The RiffTrax send ups of bad movies like “300” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” are absolutely hilarious.
But I digress…
At any rate, there’s a blog on the site, which is where John picked up on Mike’s “Month o’ Bacon” attempt. At this point, Mike’s about a week into it, to the cheers (as well as a few jeers) of various commenters (some of the commenters themselves are pretty out there, too).
While I love Mike’s sense of humor, I’m kinda lost on the why’s and wherefore’s of this particular stunt (assuming it’s serious). The human body is wonderfully resilient, and I doubt he’ll do any lasting damage (especially since he’s likely to get so sick of bacon he’ll give it up long before the month is up), but the whole thing is just…pointless. The fact that it’s bacon doesn’t really enter into it – it could be a “healthy” food like – say – oranges, and it would still be a dumb idea.
Just another example of the disconnect between what food is all about, and how we use it…drives me crazy at times.
