Notes on Ethics: Moral value of food

Afternoon tea: beautiful and not evil

You might have noticed, dearest reader, that we have been unusually quiet of late. There are reasons for this – a small diplomatic incident that has led to my Darling Julian being dispatched to the Far East for an extended period of negotiations and to myself being confined to the Shire for a restoring lease. Rest assured, we have neither forgotten nor neglected our responsibilities, and we will return in the full bloom of our glory soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to share An Event from the Bank Holiday weekend with you.

As part of the restorative process, I together with a lady acquaintance opted for a relatively decadent spa resort, partaking of healthsome massages, relaxing swimming, and, in this case, a very refined afternoon tea (not, of course, that there is any other sort when Julian or I are involved).

‘Goodness!’ my friend exclaimed, addressing herself to a particularly succulent Torta Caprese. ‘You are evil.’

I looked at the cake. It looked at me. Strange, I thought. I never realised a cake could be evil. Maybe I was wrong though? Maybe this cake had committed acts of genocide? Had stolen from orphans? Had knowingly and maliciously harmed others for its own twisted ends?  Or perhaps it had done something truly unforgivable, like use a soup spoon to eat dessert, or poured port without offering a glass to its dearest Aunty?

No. I didn’t really think that either.

And it got me thinking. My friend was adamant – anything pleasant she ate that weekend was evil. It had a moral value – and that value was bad.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do believe that there are huge moral issues around food – how we produce it, how we eat it, how we waste it, how we consume without consideration… but the actual food itself? No. I don’t believe for one second that it has a moral value.

I think that what my friend was saying was that this food had the potential to make her fat, that being fat was evil, and as such the food itself was evil. Not the person consuming the food. The food itself.

I would take issue with the idea that being fat is evil (but then, I have a vested interest in that point of view). I can appreciate that from the point of view of Christian morality, being generously proportioned is the tangible and visible result of indulging in the deadly sin of Sloth. But I do not think this was what my friend was saying. For a right-on Buddhist, pagan, Earth-mother type of woman, I think my friend was buying into the media myth that beauty equates to morality, and that thinness equates to beauty. But this is beside the point.

Torta caprese: not beautiful, but delicious - and still not evil

To ascribe moral values to food is to seem to escape the weight of our choices and responsibilities about food. It is to ignore the role we play in how we produce food, how we buy, store and waste food. It negates the importance of how we prepare, serve, and consume our meals. It removes the responsibilities we can face up to with every forkful of food we put in our mouths.

And yes, that is a huge responsibility, and a huge burden. And no, I am no saint by any means. If I look in my pantry now, there is a bundle of asparagus that was flown over from some remote province of South America, and which is so old I am at a loss at how to use it and not let it get wasted. I over-consume. I eat mindlessly on occasion. I am driven by my hungers and care more for experience than I do the world. But I know that these failings are mine – all mine. They aren’t due to a moral attribute within the food. Goodness, my dears, anyone who knows me in the non-digital world will confirm that I respond in the same way to all my hungers – I am hardly a creature of moderation.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? I am more comfortable in knowing that I am a vile example of a decadent and wasteful society than I am in calling an innocent cake ‘evil’. And if that leaves me free to enjoy a delicious mouthful of dense, moist, almond-and-chocolaty joy? Well, so much the better.