Thank you all for the wonderful comments on yesterday’s post! I loved reading about your bright spots. Today’s post is a bit long, but it sums up much of my philosophy on food, and I’d love to hear your thoughts!
When I was growing up, I remember my grandmother commenting once on my relationship with food, which I manifested as general apathy. My approach was rather atypical when compared to the other members of my family. ”Leslie,” she said, “Eating is an adventure for us. We live to eat, but you, you only eat to live.”
I’ve grappled with this issue for a long time. When I moved to New York for college, I went through the classic collegiate experimentation phase, and food was a piece of that newness and excitement. As I was coming from seventeen years of bland eating, I had a lot of ground to cover, and it didn’t much matter to me whether the food at hand was an oreo or a zucchini; it was all new to me. Though I knew food and weight were undeniably linked, this time was not wrapped in that. It was a discovery in flavor.
Of course, college students tend to favor frappuccinos over broccoli, and thus, while I was not averse to healthy foods, they did not become essential to me. Until, that is, I decided to make the commitment to lose weight.
For the first time in my life, food lost its taste. Flavor was replaced by two things: health and calories. If it wasn’t healthy; it was irrelevant to me. If it was healthy; it was a calorie, and it was ranked as such.
Eventually, with that mindset leading me down a very dark path, I had to transform my thinking yet again. Somewhere, I still saw that seventeen year old who thought food was exciting. I was still a part of that family who viewed food as an adventure. I worked to see that food was not a fluctuation on the scale, but also an experience.
I thought about the cultures I visited throughout my stays in Europe. Sitting perched on a barrel in a coastal Spanish tapas bar, tasting tuna for the first time, because fish had been deemed “vegetariana.” Shivering over a bowl of minestrone soup in the Swiss Alps, with my underdressed body chilled to its core at the peak of the Matterhorn. There was the Bedouin tent in the Israeli desert, where I scooped up fresh hummus and matboucha with pita as a utensil and a blanket as a table. There was the woman who yelled at me in Paris, because my awkward French skills held up the cafe line, and there was laughter as my friend and I chewed our baguettes afterward in the October sun at Trocadéro.
I thought about my own culture; the way my mom would fold up blintzes to break the Yom Kippur fast, the sips of wine and bites of challah we’d share over candles every Friday night, the broken pieces of matzah we’d cringe to eat during a Passover seder.
I thought about my family. The first time we dined as a foursome at Arrows. The recipe box my mom gifted me to adorn my college dorm kitchen. The meal she cooked when I returned home from my first semester abroad, so that even after sleeping in an airport with 100 pounds of luggage, I could come home to a healthy home-cooked meal.
I thought about myself. How adult it felt to prepare my own meals in my own kitchen. How powerful I felt when fueled properly at the gym or on a run. How comforting it felt to know a bowl of oatmeal awaited me each morning while I struggled with all the uncertainty of unemployment.
Yes, I believe we should eat to live, in that we should choose foods that nourish us. I believe in mostly plant-based foods, in getting back to foods from the ground and from farms, not from factories. Eating that way builds a healthy body and a longer life.
But, we can also eat for life – for pleasure, friendship, memory, comfort. We can eat not just for our bodies, but for our souls. I know food can be all-consuming. I know it can be painful. I know it can feel like the enemy. But still, I think that food is a gift.
We have to eat several times a day, so we might as well make some of those occasions an experience. If I lived my life in fear of food, if I refused to couple it with any emotion, I am astounded by the experiences I would have missed.
I had to make peace with food, or my life would have ended there. I’d rather choose vulnerability – to a taste I might dislike, to a pound I might gain, to a bad memory or even a twinge of guilt – than miss out on life entirely.
I’d rather eat, and live.
What do you think? Eat for the body or eat for the soul? Is it possible to balance the two?
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Wow this post was amazing! I read every single word slowly and carefully. The way you worded everything came out perfectly and I really related to what you were saying. I want to eat AND live too. It should not be about eating to live or living to eat. It’s both.
Thanks so much for your insight.
wow i loved reading this..it was so helpful and i just thought alot about it, it is something i often am dealing with…food=medicine or weight gain :/ … is what i have always seen food as for the past 3-4 years…i want to have a relationship with food that i see it as not just what i have to do and eat to stay alive…but something that is fun and not the main focus of my daily life. i try to put postitive energy into my food while eating and making it..and slowly iam coming to see that food is safe and not something to fear, as for so long i just though of food as what ed told me it was.
love the idea of eating for the soul! for fun, pleasure, company, and an experiences and memories! food is so mcuh more than just fuel…it fuels our future, our souls, and it shaped us and will continue to shape us into who we are!
xo
maya
seriously Leslie this post was amazing, i so enjoyed reading it and can relate on so many levels, my family, well most of my family def lives to eat, my dad and his brothers all grew up in paris and other countries, and my aunt is a pastry chef…and i am jewish as well and at passover and other holidays, food is always such the main focus, everything always needs to be perfect, but that side of my family is very healthy yet food was always made to be such a big deal…
and i believe the more beautiful and nourishing foods you eat, and the more positive energy you put into eating and cooking the more beautiful you will be! 
i think you should live to eat and eat to live, like you said, food is a source of pleasure, comfort memories and so much more…as well as nourishing our bodies and making us our healthiest selves we can be…we are what we eat,
xx
Eliza
I think balance doesn’t come easily to a lot of us. Maybe more so our generation than those previous to us- or maybe it’s some other reason. I struggle with eating to live V living to eat. In my mind, defying logic, food and life are seperate. There is food and there is life/health/happiness- contradictory given how my eating habits fall in line with whatever mental/physical situation I am in, but I have a hard time believing that food IS life (ie, without food there is no life). I have grown to apprecciate food for how it tastes, how it makes me feel, the occasions it lets me partake in and the memories it creates. I am working on keeping it in a compartment- I don’t want my world to be 100% food, whether it’s eating to live or living to eat… I just want to live and enjoy everything along the way. Food inlcuded
…and that made no sense whatsoever. I am blaming jetlag!
I agree with Ellie
that Balance sometimes is hard to do.. but its important!! Eating for your body, of course, is very important. we need to “eat to live” !! But you must eat for your soul as well.. Eat what you want, and not feel guilty. eat what you love! and love your body too.
I say balance is the ultimate goal. You want to eat for the soul, but not let that get out of hand where it soon effects your body in negative ways because then that also effects your soul. You also don’t want to eat for only the body because that can lead down a negative road that also effects your soul. It’s good to be in touch with both and to find an equilibrium that brings harmony to both body and soul.
I totally think balance between the two is possible. As long as eating isn’t done to shut out other feelings, in the form of a binge or some other unhealthy behavior, it’s completely okay to eat foods that comfort, invigorate or calm you. The trick is knowing that we have control over the start and the stop of the behavior.
Loved this post!
“I’d rather eat, then live.”
leslie, you have such a perfectly articulate and story-like way of explaining yourself and i love this whole post (and your previous one on bright spots, which i just caught up on) and ending summation. i can’t think of much else to say then…. i completely agree.
i love being fascinated by food and looking forward to eating delicious things, but there should totally be a balance of many, many bright spots in front of your eyes, not just food as one overwhelmingly glare-y one. also, health in food = there should be a balance. the way you eat should be hand in hand with your physical health and living your life the fullest way you can.
again, love this
♥
Reading your reminiscing about Europe is reminding me how great it is to eat like a European- they definitely eat for the soul over there. They don’t sweat a serving of quality fromage, you can eat pastries for breakfast if you want, wine is ubiquitous… yet somehow they get more vegetables and weigh less than us. I think it’s something about getting SATISFACTION from food, and therefore getting the right portions.
love the trip..even at my advanced age there are still choices to be made..and sometimes what is bad is just sooo good you have to indulge..to feed the soul..
i agree, balance is the goal here! we need to eat to live but we also need to eat for pleasure and to excite our taste. otherwise everything we ate could just be boring and bland. but i need tasty, funky foods to fee me
Wow I just read this for the first time, and I will be going back to reread and click on the links. This was honesty in its most amazing form! Balance has always been the key to everything..the problem is that people’s lifestyles have become so extream that balance often doesn’t exist. Some worry about eating too much, some stress on eating too little. Once we get back to the basics, wholesome foods..that there is the balance. I say live wholesomely and good foods will be apart of that. I guess I’m rambling…anyways great post Leslie!!
xoxo
Maggie