Here's a food journal I had to do for one of my classes:

The agricultural revolution was known as the beginning of human civilization. What does it mean to be civilized, though? Does it mean that we’re any freer? Do we have more free time? Not necessarily. In fact, the invention of totalitarian agriculture (that agriculture which seeks to completely control the ecosystem of a cultivated plot of land) only leads to things like the peasant class and increasingly centralized authority. Then the advent of capitalism opened up a whole Pandora’s box of marginalization and exploitation. Foragers had more free time than we do. They didn’t need to work for a wage. We, on the other hand, are slaves to technology. We waste more energy on pre-packaged food because we have been alienated from our labor. We no longer partake in what we create. Therefore, we have lost the reverence of food that the foragers seemed to understand.

I wonder how certain foods are discovered. Did people just pick fruits from off the trees and test them to see if they killed them or made them stronger? I was thinking about that in terms of medicinal and psychoactive herbs. A lot of experimenting must have gone on. How could someone discover that if you eat Echinacea root you won’t be sick for as long or if you eat enough nutmeg you’ll have a spiritual experience. Somebody must have tried these plants and asked themselves, “What is this doing to my body/mind?” This is cultural knowledge. We should not take it for granted. We have a lot to thank the cultures that came before us for. If people hundreds and thousands of years ago hadn’t discovered these things which we take for granted today the world would be a lot harder place to live.

Friday, September 12:

12pm
Coffee
Cookie

3pm
Hummus pita
Coffee
Soup

6pm
Iced tea

8pm
40 oz. Old English Malt Liquor
Two slices of cheese pizza
Iced tea
Rolling Rock beer

I don’t eat a whole lot, but it’s more than I used to. I’m not vegan anymore because I had started to lose weight again. I still try to avoid animal ingredients wherever I can, but I’ve been known to eat desserts containing eggs and pizza with cheese. I should drink more beer. That would make me fatter. The problem is I always get piss drunk after only one 40.

Monday, September 15

12pm
Coffee
Pizza
Ice cream bar

3pm
Coffee
Hummus pita
Ice cream bar

8pm
Eggplant curry
Green tea

12am
Dumpstered loaf cake
Chamomile tea

I don’t eat a lot of real food. Usually I just pick up whatever is around and cheap (preferably free). It’s nice when Talal (my roommate) cooks, but it’s even better when his mom is here and she cooks for us. I have a lot of issues with parents. I don’t usually feel comfortable around them, but if they’re giving me food it makes it better. Then we have the connection. It’s like by them offering me food they’re accepting me and by my acceptance of their food I’m accepting them.

Tuesday, September 16

10:30am
Coffee
Toast and peanut butter

11:15am
Coffee

1:30pm
Coffee
Hummus pita
Vegan soup

5:30pm
Coffee
Cheese pizza

8pm
Iced tea
Granola bar

I tend to consume a lot of cigarettes and other smokables throughout the course of the day, but I don’t think that’s considered food. Although it is something that is consumed orally, I think for it to be food it has to have some nutritional value. That’s why you can consider beer a food even though it’s also a drug. Actually, just about any food can be considered a drug because the definition of a drug is something that changes your body. So any food is a drug, but not any drug is food.

Fruits/Vegetables:
Fruit (derogatory term for a queer person), Vegetable (comatose person), Lettuce (money), a bad apple spoils the whole barrel, couch potato, cauliflower ears

I don’t know, I’m not very good at this right now. It seems like a lot of the phrases describing vegetables like couch potato and related phrases describe lifelessness. Perhaps it represents unconsciousness. A vegetable is something that is alive, but not conscious. A vegetable has no thought. It does not dream or imagine or respond immediately to stimuli. Vegetables are the unconscious counterparts to animals.

A poem about food…
Eat and it will make you hungry
But starve yourself and you will die
Drink the brown glass bottle of poison
And finally understand the meaning behind broken glass
Purge when yr done binging
Puking only makes your stomach empty
So why should we be puking
When others are starving
And all we can think of
Is how much we’ve had to drink
Or how we shouldn’t have taken that much cold medicine
Food will change your body
It can also change your mind
They say you are what you eat
And you are if you eat yourself
Prolonging the pain of being alive
Prolonging the curse of existence
Eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we’re all dying