Searching For Unity in America? Let’s Talk About Food.
Mealtime is sacred in many cultural and religious traditions. In Catholicism, Jesus institutes the Sacrament of the Eucharist at the Last Supper in the miraculous breaking of bread. In Judaism, the feast of Shabbat invites a deep reflection on spiritual life beginning around a meal. The Hindu tradition celebrates Annaprashan, marking the introduction of solid food into a baby’s diet as a significant milestone in the baby’s life. These traditions reveal something about food worth reflecting on. Food invites community as it nourishes us, helps us grow and transforms us. It’s necessary for our survival. Perhaps an obvious statement to make, but it’s worth acknowledging the fundamental power of food to understand what it could mean for us today.
Fast forward with me to the present day. What does your mealtime look like? What does food mean to you and those around you? At some point in American culture, mealtime became overwhelmingly defined as a chore to check off, and a 15-minute distraction to our regularly scheduled programming. Our grab-n-go culture encourages a lifestyle defined by checklists and consumed by an abundance of distractions at our fingertips. Such a culture has cradled the neglect of mealtime as sacred, contributing to an exhaustive list of pains we experience physically, socially and economically.
Americans have forgotten how simple nutrition is and can be, disconnecting from consuming whole foods and locally sourced ingredients in favor of market trends. We’ve believed the lie that making a satiating meal is too daunting and complicated a task, that it takes too much time and disincentivizes productivity. I think we’ve over-complicated our food choices and convinced ourselves that mealtime is inconvenient. We have to commit ourselves to undoing that narrative.
Here’s what we can do:
Buy primarily single-ingredient foods, using local in-season produce when possible, and discover your own culinary staples.
Shop smartly, focusing on a couple of options of produce, protein and starches each week and repurposing them for different meals.
Invest in quality over quantity, and let the nutrition in the ingredients do the rest.
Make your plate beautiful. It takes just a couple extra minutes to assemble your meal in such a way that invokes a deeper appreciation for what’s in front of you.
When we value our food choices and consume nutrient-dense food, it helps us feel satisfied and fulfilled. A state of fulfillment creates a space that welcomes conversation and an appreciation for what is and who is around us. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It sounds like something we yearn for today.
The breakdown of the meal is reflective of the kind of brokenness most of us feel in our culture. Nearly every day Americans are reminded of how divided we are as a culture and that the only solution is unity. Yet unity has become some abstract idea, disconnecting individuals and communities as an essential ingredient to the solution. The only way to achieve unity is to begin by focusing on something good, found in the natural state of human beings. We inherently desire connection and both the giving and receiving of love. Connections start in the orbit that’s around you but are only welcomed in an environment of mutual appreciation and engagement that takes effort to facilitate. Maybe the meal is where we start. How often do we invite others around a table to create something and enjoy it collectively? If we really want unity, we have to take steps that are sustainable and powerful in building towards a lofty goal. When we return to the basics, honoring what food literally does in our body, we can revitalize an appreciation for the meal. Such conviction in the power of mealtime serves as nourishment for ourselves and our community.
If you’ve followed my philosophical digression this far, I’m going to pose to you a challenge: host a dinner party. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Invite your friends, and maybe even acquaintances, to gather around a meal prepared with nourishing ingredients worthy of your appreciation. Engage with one another around a table and remember that those moments are the beginning of unity.