Freetarian’s Apology

The trouble is not grocery shopping. I do just fine when I stock up in supermarkets—my purchases typically including: fruits, vegetables, organic milk and yogurt, hummus, cheese, eggs, pasta or rice or couscous, wheat or some other very grainy bread, natural peanut butter, fibrous cereals, vegetarian refried beans when I want to make some Mexican food, some wine or tasty beer from time to time—this is what I buy to eat. I do not like to purchase meat except for the occasional can of fish because I try not to support the factory farm industry, but I will not deny it if it is given to me or if I go out to a restaurant (I like my amino acids and think eating meat in essence is completely natural, just not the modern way it is “harvested”). I avoid buying snacks and sweets, knowing that if I buy them, I will surely eat them, and it is likely that some other scenario will arise in which I will have a chance to sneak in something less healthy. And it is in such scenarios that my resolute caves: I am a sucker for free food, in any form. Perhaps it is the survival strategy of a tight-budget college student that I have come to adopt. Or just the idea that if something is “free,” it is automatically good and this luck should be taken advantage of. Whatever the root, I have an extremely difficult time saying no to free food. It doesn’t even have to be a food that I like or looks appealing; I happen to not really like cake at all and still ate it twice in the past two weeks when it was offered to me. Even if I am not hungry or packed a lunch, I will eat free food with the rationalization that my groceries will last longer if I have the option to delay eating them (I can then eat my packed lunch as dinner). My friends and I are skilled scavengers, and if one of us comes upon free food, there is a chain of communication that ensures it is distributed and all are fed. Some of us even carry a Tupperware in our backpacks to be prepared for such an occasion. Maybe it is this communal wolf-packish practice that makes it so hard to quit; I could be sacrificing the wellbeing of the tribe (though a couple of weeks ago along with the cake I was offered bags full of finger sandwiches left-over from a school function that I immediately and joyously dispatched among friends but did not partake in their consumption). The point is, there is something very primal in the excitement of opportunistic eating. I witnessed this to an extreme when I worked at Costco as a sample-lady (yes, complete with a hairnet, apron, gloves, and wonderfully senile co-workers) and watched the hordes of members swoop down on my tray, rarely making eye contact, tunnel-vision on the watering hole. It is fascinating how food can on one hand bring out our most animalistic instincts of competition, on the other be the medium of deep bonding in its sharing (perhaps precisely because it is so valued). Anyway, in order to be able to abide Pollan’s plan for eating, this is something I must work on. I need to learn to say no to free. I guess I can still be fulfilled in the delivering the bounty even if I myself do not take a taste.