Everyday Systems

On Friday afternoons, on the way back home from work, I run into my neighbour.
She sits at a cafe on the square. I join her and we chat.
She does most of the talking.

She likes talking about food mainly.
She prides herself on knowing a great deal about food.
She profers plenty of food advice.
She quit coffee and tea. Wheat is the devil's food - it's like a glue in your body. You mustn't drink while eating.
She buys mainly organic.

At every such sitting, she has two kinds of pastry along with her mineral water.
She's obese.

Oh, my. Yes, that is why I now avoid almost all talk about nutrients and such, unless I have the right audience. If I walk the talk, and someone asks, that's different. But criticizing eating habits and body commenting has become a national past time, and unfortunately IMO, a source of bonding for women.

Isn't it interesting that slim societies also talk about food a lot, but mostly about pleasure?

I once went to a practice presentation, as a favor, put on by a friend of a friend who had done a whole nutrition course on the dangers of wheat, etc. She spent a lot of money on the course, saying she wanted to make it a new career. (I got in trouble with the mutual friend for pointing out, not to the prospective nutritionist, that statistically, it does not support great numbers of people. I also got in trouble because at the presentation, I asked why Italy was not reporting all the problems that wheat was supposed to be causing.) The next week, I saw the presenter at a street fair, eating a big chocolate chip cookie. She also is in the low obese range. And I'm not even saying she might have been right about the wheat!

And she works at Goodwill.

Ok, better put the gavel away before someone hits me on the head with it.

oh my....