COMFORT FOODS ARE A FLAWED BUT HUMAN WAY TO GET SAFELY THROUGH A DIFFICULT TIME.
In the early days of the pandemic and the lockdown ( the days when it would have seemed absurd to imagine a shutdown measured in months), I found myself and my family unusually focused on food.
We have never been the sourdough types. And feasting on canned goods — even highly processed ones — does not bring the shame and horror I understand it does in many households. Even here, however, the vague threat of scarcity led to more time in the kitchen, with me turning out surprising quantities of homemade brownies and blondies, and the kids requesting homemade cookies every other day.
At Easter time, when we were avoiding grocery stores and having Domino’s pizzas dropped at our door regularly, it still felt vitally important to make a carrot cake from scratch. So important that I ordered overpriced carrots and cream cheese from a convenience store through Uber Eats to make it happen. And so important that I eventually ate half the delicious cake myself before dumping the rest in the green bin. ( No one else would touch it because my daughters had left it out all night “for the Easter bunny.” Food safety. But I had gone to so much trouble …)
The best sense I can make of our weird food behaviour is that we needed comfort and solace, reassurance that we would be sustained in a scary time.
So, I whipped up more baked goods than we could or cared to eat, while my husband, the former sea cadet, busied himself ordering enough MRES (those Meals, Ready to Eat that soldiers use in the field and preppers hoard in cellars) to fill several shelves in our laundry room.
( The jovial man who sold my husband the MRES congratulated him on having had the good sense to keep his identity shielded when he made the purchase. In truth, my husband had just used my name because my credit card was handiest. But there was a “you can’t be too careful” feeling in the air that made the comment seem slightly less nuts than it normally would have.)
And the thing is, all that sub-functional sustenance-related coping — overfeeding of self and loved ones on hand- crafted sweet happy foods, overbuying of military rations when the only shortages evident in grocery stores were Charmin and pure vanilla extract — felt healthy.
I am not saying it is a lifestyle we ought to continue indefinitely, but it has been nurturing (in more than the caloric sense). A flawed but ultimately preserving human way to get ourselves safely through a difficult time.
Unfortunately, as the lockdown has progressed, I have started noticing another human tendency that feels less benign. Have you ever had the impulse to clean up your diet, purge the junk from your system, flush out the toxins, purify your microbiome, abstain your way to perfect health? I have, and it has been asserting itself more vehemently lately.
I used to think my tendency to convince myself that some version of “eating clean” — if I could just stick strictly enough to whatever the regimen happened to be — would solve all that ails me, was a result of my particular environment. I am a curvy female who grew up in a diet culture and has suffered from bothersome (but not medically serious) stomach complaints most of my life; what do you expect?
But as I sit here on day one-hundred- and- I- don’t- know- what- because- I- lost- count- at- sixty- five of a state of emergency, and I sense that longing to start a new vaguely punitive program of prescribed and proscribed eating, it occurs to me that there’s a universality to that wish to use self- control to power past flaws and pain. There have been fasting cures (and charlatans pushing them) hundreds of years longer than there have been supermodels or macro- counting apps. Because coping with distress by bearing down and getting tough with yourself is just as natural a response as offering yourself warmth and compassion. Maybe even more so.
I am here to remind you, and myself, that just as an organic carrot bestows no more nor less moral virtue than a slice of white Wonder bread, eating clean ( or meatless or Keto) will not make someone a more nor less worthy person, but it might just make them less likely to emerge from this pandemic with a healthy psyche.
You are going to make less than perfect food choices while living in a world facing major health, social and economic upheaval. We all will. Because we are human beings.
Let us do ourselves a favour and let those “mistakes” be ones that nourish and support, rather ones than seek to chasten and correct.
If you need any help with that, I would be happy to make you some chocolate chip cookies.
eating clean ... will not make someone a more nor less worthy person.