The Truth behind Dinner

I know a woman who often, instead of planning meals outright, looks through her cupboards and refrigerator and picks out all of the things that she feels like eating. After completing their preparation, she arranges her choices neatly on a plate and attempts to come to some conclusion about her state that day by them.

"Everything I wanted to eat today was green," she said once. She proceeded to guess why.

Green could be a sign of fertility; she could be pregnant.

Green could be a sign of envy; she could be coveting something.

Green could be a sign of money; perhaps she would soon come into some kind of inheritance.

"I think you're low on iron," I told her.

Trying to learn something about ones mood or fortune or future from the food one chooses for dinner is charming, no doubt. I have attempted this many times for amusement, with much success. I do, however, take more stock in the idea that when we have cravings for certain types of food, as my friend above did when she only wanted green leafy vegetables, our body is trying to tell us that we are missing something. Case and point: I get cravings for rare red meat once and a while, but if I wanted to satisfy them without steak, I find that lentils work well. Both are high in iron. My mother, when she was pregnant, often craved sour things, like lemons, orange juice, and yogurt. All are important sources of folic acid, which has been shown to prevent fetal neural tube defects. [This is all complete conjecture and I can offer no concrete proof of that there is a correlation between cravings for beef and being satisfied with lentils, or my mothers pre-partum cravings and the importance of folic acid during pregnancy.]

Some scientists have taken this idea much farther, into the realm of Nutritional Genetics. The main concept behind Nutritional Genetics is this: We, as humans, have completed at least some of our evolution in radically different environments from one another, and therefore evolved eating different things. We are meant to eat what we evolved to eat, and if we don't, we have health problems.

I first learned of the field of nutritional genetics in an article in the New York Times Science section. Now, some concepts I was already aware of. Diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and high cholesterol are all disorders that can be inherited, but can also be controlled or prevented, to some extent, by diet. (Notice the CYAQ, there.) It makes sense then, that if you are genetically vulnerable to Type II diabetes, that ideally you would have a diet low in simple sugars and saturated fat.

Even if one didn't suffer from diabetes, or other similar diseases, we all have, according to the field, an ideal diet. One that correlates to the foods available to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, whether they be Teutons, Incas, or Hausas.

After reading this article, I thought back on who my ancestors were, what my genetically predetermined diet should consist of. I couldn't think of much. My father's family is Dutch and Frisian; my mother's family is of Scottish, German, and French heritage. As hunter gatherers my ancestors were probably traversing central and northern Europe, following herds of large game. So, without further extensive research, that doesn't tell me much. [I do, however, like to pretend that due to my meat-eating ancestors, I can eat as much fatty, rare-to-the-point-of-just-warmed-over prime rib as I can get (oh, and I can eat it, if I can get it), and not have to worry about high blood pressure, cholesterol, or obesity. ]

In a recent essay ["In the Flesh", Vogue;June, 2005] , Jeffrey Steingarten gave his thoughts on why it would be unnatural to crave anything but fish:

"My idea is that anybody with even half a brain would have migrated toward the sea. Humans are naturally drawn to the seashore; just compare the relative prices of beach front property in Malibu with prices on the Iowa plains. . . High-quality animal protein was there for the asking, clams and oysters and fish that could be easily speared or trapped. Red meat has few nutritional advantages over seafood and many deficits . . . only the most clueless of our species would choose to live deep in a forest or jungle and daily risk their lives for the sake of animal protein."

I don't quite know how much stock to take in these new predestined diets, yet. Having a background in biochemistry, and the inherent genetics courses that go with it, I am wary of buying into the popular misunderstanding/conception that genetic make up can explain everything, though it has been used to explain many things recently from a person's political orientation to whether or not a person believes in God. [I am however, still pondering the question of the genetically controlled diet, while having written off the genetically predetermined atheism and political allegiance as complete crap.]

I found myself in a position today, similar to that of my friend of the green foods. I was hungry, and I had a lot of food in my fridge - mostly leftovers. My pantry shelf was similarly full. I grabbed everything that I wanted: the last 2 eggs, the last piece of tart from Saturday, some greens, and a bowl of the watercress soup that I made yesterday [I will write about that experience later.] For dessert, I set aside a package of Swiss Cake Rolls.

What does this say about me? I asked. Out of the many things on my shelves and in my fridge - this is what I chose? Eggs, salad herbs and leftover soup and vegetable pie?

According to my friend's fortune telling method:

Now, eggs, on Easter, are symbols of new life. They may also symbolize happiness, prosperity, and good fortune. In Aesop's Fable of the "Goose who Laid the Golden Eggs", eggs symbolized good fortune that ended in greed and loss. So, hmmm. . . fortune and loss.

As for the greens: The meals that I grew up with followed, roughly, the square meal plan that came into vogue in the 40's and 50's: meat, starch, vegetable, salad (on top of the vegetable), bread, and maybe, dessert. [For a witty and sensible discussion of this asinine meal plan, see MFK Fisher's essay "How to be Sage without Hemlock" from How to Cook a Wolf. ] So, dinner really isn't dinner without the salad, for me. Perhaps I was in a nostalgic mood.

The tart and the soup were leftovers that had to be consumed; clearly, this is a sign of thrift. So I am feeling frugal today.

And, last but certainly not least. . . the Swiss Cake Roll. For the uninitiated, the Swiss cake roll is a 6"x3"x1/4" rectangle of chocolate-flavored carpet padding, rolled into a perfect cylinder about 3/4-1" thick with a wet tile grout/petroleum jelly emulsion heavily dosed with vanilla and sugar. It is then coated with deep mocha-colored and chocolate-flavored Tinkerbell nail polish, and you can buy twelve of them for fewer coins than those in your coin purse. In other words, they are heaven.

And here, with dessert, is where I fess up and admit that I've known all along why these foods occupy my dinner plate.

You see, I love terrible foods. I do. I love Swiss Cake Rolls, processed and injection-molded cheddar cheese, and the Macaroni that comes in a blue box. I think that Ruffles Cheddar and Sour Cream Potato Chips deserve their own level on the food pyramid, and that biting into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with Wonderbread after months of being denied can be an almost spiritual experience. I lived off of Pop Tarts for a week my freshman year of college . . . by choice.

But my favorite foods fill me with guilt. So, every once and a while when dangerous temptation takes over, I have to pile on my plate hard-boiled eggs, arugula, endive and radicchio, a vegetable tart, and soup made of what is basically gourmet swamp-weed (delicious, though) so as to force myself to eat more than Swiss Cake Rolls for dinner.