By Scott Heiner
Hopefully you have have been having holiday feasts and by now awakened from your feast comas. If you’re awake, I’d like to discuss the real value of food.What is the value of food? You might say, “Duh! food is necessary to stay alive.” Well, of course that statement is true. I’m not talking about how much food costs either, but to me, food is much more than mere sustenance. It is what binds people together in love and fellowship. Much more than televised football games, the Macy’s Parade and Black Friday, it’s really the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner that brings us together.
The late Anthony Bourdain understood and expressed the concept best. The host of several food and world-travel TV programs, Bourdain was famous for his adventurous spirit in trying foods from all over the world. In his willingness to eat anything edible (and some things not so much), he put me to shame. I admired him to no end and some of his quotations about food express my feelings exactly.
Thanksgiving dinner and similar family-gathering meals like Christmas, Easter, Mother’s and Father’s Day dinners and summer barbecues is what really makes families work. Bourdain says, “There is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems,” he then goes on to discuss how members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to become delinquents, criminals, or drug addicts.
He adds, “Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.” The food we’ve shared with family is really the source of many of our treasured memories. Remember the smell of Grandma’s fresh baked bread or her chicken noodle soup?
Even more far-reaching than eating meals with family is the potential of food to bring peoples together from all over the globe for understanding. Bourdain: “Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go.”
Although I don’t have the means to travel around the world in person, I have done so vicariously through trying the ethnic foods of as many different places as I can. Growing up, I was introduced to Mexican, Italian and Chinese food which is pretty common in Utah. Then, on an LDS mission to Japan, I was exposed to really unfamiliar foods and gained an appreciation for Oriental food in general.
Thus emboldened, I was willing to try just about anything including Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Greek, Middle Eastern, and Tibetan dishes. Most recently I’ve become engrossed with trying African cuisine. It’s a whole new gastronomical world barely opened to America. At each ethnic restaurant, I try to learn the names of some of their foods and a few phrases such as “please, thank you,” and “that was delicious.” It really helps break the ice.
A few years ago, I lived in a major city back east. I was studying the Old Testament that year and out of curiosity and to get a first-hand experience of Judaism, I decided to attend a Sabbath (Saturday) service at a Jewish synagogue. The service was very interesting, but I was delighted to learn that they have a custom of holding a pot luck dinner after the service each week. They invited me to join them and I had the chance to visit with the people and discuss their culture. I really don’t remember what we ate, but from this wonderful tradition, I was sure they had the spirit of the Lord.
Then there’s Middle Eastern food. I find it to be some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. Thin savory slices of roasted shawarma meat, shish kebabs, hummus dip, falafel fritters, tabbouleh salad, all served with pita bread; oh, my mouth is watering just writing this. I’m also crazy about their salty yogurt drink. In the last decade there has been a major distrust and fear of people from the Middle East, but when they serve such delectable mouth-watering cuisine, you just know they have to be good people!
Anthony Bourdain summed it up with a very simple statement: “You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.”
We lost a great public figure with the passing of Anthony Bourdain last June, but we would do well by following his example. If we could just get families to eat together more often and get everybody to try ethnic food—as much variety as possible, it just might be the answer to world peace.
Feast on earth, good will to men.
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