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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I’m not trying to be a killjoy: in fact, I’m a firm believer in “eat, drink and be merry.”\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Works for me.<\/p>\n
But what I find peculiar are the bizarre, virtually non-nutritive uses – and abuses –\u00a0of food.\u00a0 These range from the mundane (i.e., emotional eating and obsessive food rituals) to the ridiculous (such as competitive eating<\/a>, and the creation of various food monstrosities such as gigantic sandwiches<\/a> or chocolate hotel rooms<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0The way we view food<\/a> would\u00a0leave our stone age ancestors scratching their heads and wondering just WTF is wrong with us.<\/p>\n Yet another\u00a0example of this\u00a0appeared on my radar screen this morning, from a rather unlikely source.\u00a0 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<\/a>.”<\/p>\n “Whuh?” was my\u00a0semi-hypoglycemic reply.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n What the heck…here’s a sample:<\/p>\n [youtube:http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MJKtN_ceHkQ]<\/p>\n The show’s defunct now, but Mike (plus\u00a0MST3K alums\u00a0Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy) have extended the concept to RiffTrax<\/a> – inexpensive downloadable “riffs” you can sync to popular movies.\u00a0 The RiffTrax send ups of bad movies like “300” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” are absolutely hilarious.\u00a0<\/p>\n But I digress…<\/p>\n