Aesthetics and Food

I spent all of June in Ireland, teaching for my university and traveling around with a friend and my mom. It was a great experience, in part because Ireland is such a visually powerful place. The colors--not just greens--are so lovely and lush. But it wasn't just the colors of the scenery that appealed to my friend, Jennifer, who came to travel with me there.

Jennifer helped make me more profoundly aware of the visual element of food. We would walk past pastry shops, fruit and vegetable stands, and we ate in restaurants every day. It seemed like at least once every day Jennifer would say, in rapturous tones, "Oh! Look at this food! It's so beautiful!!" And then she'd snap a picture of it. And then she'd admire it some more before eating it or walking on. While I've sometimes admired how delicious or creative or pretty a food looked, I had not really ever taken the time to admire the natural or created beauty of the foods that surround my life.

Before hanging out with Jennifer, I certainly never bothered with making things look good on my plate. My general practice was to slop food from the pan to the plate. Insert the food into my pie hole. Chew. Swallow. Done. What's more, I had never really noticed the slapdash presentation of foods at your average chain restaurant...such as the dull presentation of my omelet yesterday. No care went into making it, and no care went into serving it on my plate.

You know what else? No care went into eating it, either. Just gorging, unlike all those meals I ate in Ireland with Jennifer where I took time to look at it because she took time to look at hers. I found myself appreciating the flavors, the colors, and the organization of my meals there because it was brought to my attention. Even at home, I can't help now but notice the colors and the careful arrangement and embellishment of my food. And, believe it or not, all of that makes me enjoy and appreciate so much more the beauty of eating, of being nourished. Of the luxury of having enough to eat--and enough nutritious food to eat. I'm in the minority there, on a world scale.

I don't think it's any coincidence that the foods that are best for us are often more colorful than are the unhealthy foods. Fruits and vegetables come in all kinds of crazy reds, purples, yellows, greens, oranges, and blues. Processed foods are often dull and brown and sometimes alarmingly fluorescent (hello, Cheetos). It's also no coincidence that I enjoy food when I take more time to think about it. For one thing, it makes me slow down instead of inhale. For another, it makes me think about the correlation of color and taste. I try to remember that colors have tastes when it comes to food (not so much for paint, though. Haha.). The times when I'm best at reflecting on this while I eat are the times I'm most satisfied at the end of the meal.

Jennifer has taught me the power of the eyes, and that our eyes don't have to be bigger than our stomachs. They can actually be the safeguard for our stomachs.