Happy new year! After convalescing from the heap of food rituals that formed the month of December, the Ambivore rises from her post-Christmas torpor, surveys the horizon of the brand new year, and says: WTF???
January, it appears, is the month of self-hate. CBC shows can’t stop nattering about diets and the HEALTH CRISIS, and the Globe and Mail last weekend was all about fat fat fat. At gyms across the city, cash registers ring like a Carillon church bell, herding everyone to the gym to pay for their guilt and shame. There should be a confession booth at the end of the treadmill; it would give some reprieve to the poor souls following their personal trainers around, genuflecting, panting, and wheezing their way to virtue.
How can we argue with a booming multibillion dollar diet and fitness industry? Let the Ambivore make it easy for you. The modern day ethos can be distilled to this: Eating salad will make you happy. Salads make you good.
And to illustrate this truth, you can visit “Laughing Alone With Salad”.
So how do we counter this ridiculous orthodoxy, other than reaching for our stash of chocolate (as in “Laughing Alone with Chocolate”)?
Perhaps we should let February be about the RE-TOX.
It can be about celebration and reviving the core tenant of eating: joy! We can eat food we love, eat with our hands, and start and end each meal with gratitude for our bodies. Even if (or maybe because) as we age our bodies continue to shift, expand and decrease in ways that surprise us.
“Laughing Alone With Salad” could very well be the most hysterical picture montage I have ever seen. i want to watch it over and over again.
Although I guess I should reserve my final judgement as I appear to be blocked from viewing ” Laughing Alone with Chocolate” from work……………………….
What’s not to laugh about? Lettuce… silly. Carrots… so funny. Tomatoes… frickin’ hilarious!
That is true. The turnip (and that silly clash of vowels) is the most hilarious! Or pumpkin. Jabberwocky!