Size
Post election and the zeitgeist is tense. Wouldn’t be nice to gather around a table to break bread and enjoy the communal pleasure of a shared meal? But, no, it can’t happen because someone will be asking “Is this gluten free?”
We’ve added portions of condescension and moral superiority to our overflowing plates. Our appetites always rally, but the resulting indigestion should be a warning.
It feels as though we’ve never been more divided, but, in fact, we have quite a lot in common, specifically, an estimated seven billion pounds of extra weight we’re carrying on our bodies. This extra weight doesn’t discriminate and knows no party line. This extra baggage paired with the emotional component of years of failure is weighing us down. Turn on the television, and you will see we have a unique ability to ignore what we’ve become. We are all together shoulder-to-shoulder one nation indivisible!
To some degree we have always been known for our big size. Is this the shared American experience? Regardless of race, religion, geography, education or culture, we value BIG. America has the biggest economy, military, cars, food portions and bodies. We’ve mastered bigness. We live by the motto “Go big, or go home”. Now, we want to soar to greatness weighed down by billions of extra pounds. This is the elephant in the room, and we can’t ignore it any longer.
Some of us have arrived at our enlarged bodies from a guilt driven elitist wellness mindset commonly known as public/private eating. We distract ourselves with edible solutions: raw, vegan, paleo, sprouted, organic, hyper-local, grass fed, probiotic, microbiotic, macrobiotic, kombucha, kefir, cacao nibs, maca, acai, algae, GMO free, gluten free, allergen free, sugar free, yeast free, carb free, fat free, multigrain, whole grain, no grain. Pretty soon, we’ll be eating just the box for fiber. While our search for the perfect combo hasn’t worked, we do get to talk importantly, even sanctimoniously, about fitness and nutrition. The public deprivation may seem out of whack with the added poundage, but just one weekly binge is all it takes.
What about the rest of us? Imagine somebody politically opposite, for example, a “pro-life” or NRA supporter. This is who you expect to be too big because they categorically reject “eat healthy”. This is not because it is grammatically incorrect or a euphemism for rabbit food, but, rather, because eating is often their only joy. Today America has been balkanized into so many opposing groups. We don’t seem to be united on anything. But on one subject we can all agree: extra weight is what we all share.