PEACEMEAL - Cooking Good Food Can Transform Beasts into Beauties (Commentary)

- by Cynthia Thomet

Good food, like a freshly-made, addictive dip can produce an instant “food orgasm”. Appreciation for good food can tempt you to go back for a careless, but passionately enjoyed, “double dip”. (If you’re unfamiliar with the term, see a YouTube clip of the Seinfeld episode on double-dipping.)   Bad food, like artificial ingredients, trans-fats and dishes that are poorly assembled, can send you and your lardy caboose into a food coma so debilitating you wouldn’t even be able to open the door to trick-or-treaters.  

Bad food—and I use the term very liberally—can ruin a person’s career or blow a perfectly good relationship.

A family friend used to tell the same story whenever we gathered to eat. He, an international journalist, was invited to dinner at the house of a prominent Japanese source.  I believe the host was an ambassador.

The meal began on crisp, white rectangular plates. A simple, delicate salad, with slices of raw fish. Dressing criss-crossed the plate, carrots were carved into mini boats, radishes were rice paper houses. The arrangement was an edible relief of a Japanese village. The cleanest presentation communicated the care for precision of Japanese design.

As my friend lifted his chopsticks to destroy the beautiful landscape, he eyed a skinny, green inch worm working its way out of a tangle of frisée.

“Look! Mine’s animated!”

The ambassador, stunned, embarrassed and shamed, had the offending plate removed, and made his way into the kitchen. My friend is certain that a chef lost his job that day and wishes he hadn’t said a thing. Even if he had told the Ambassador that he wasn’t offended, but rather amused by the unexpected guest at the table, he wonders whether it would have altered the course of history.

The Seinfeld episode, and my friend’s real-life episode, bear witness to the fact that our relationships (our places in society and culture) are inextricably linked to the foods we eat, how we identify with those foods and our futures as people and as a human race.  

If beastly behavior can cause conflict, perhaps a good meal could transform our animal instincts into creative deal-brokering. Maybe there’s a recipe for causing a delicious ripple effect across a negotiating table.

Richard Wrangham of Harvard University might agree. In a press release  published on the university website, Wrangham is quoted as saying, “Cooking is what makes the human diet ‘human,’ and the most logical explanation for the advances in brain and body size over our ape ancestors.”

If cooking had the power to change a species biologically and anatomically over millennia, then it would follow that it could have relatively immediate effects on us socially—even if the technique remained, by and large, the same.

My editor framed her vision for the column, citing the food commonalities shared between Palestinians and Israelis. If world leaders could dip their flatbread into the same bowl of the most amazing hummus, maybe they could broker an agreement and collaboratively teach the world a thing or two about dip. 

(On that note, do you have a recipe for amazing dip? Post it to the HUMNEWS guest book!)

--- The author is Cynthia Thomet, a humanitarian, and co owner and doyenne of the award winning downtown Atlanta, Georgia; US restaurant, Lunacy Black Market. http://www.lunacyblackmarket.com