On Being Good and Bad

One of the things that comes up often in relation to eating is the concept of "good" and "bad" foods. Salad=good, cookies=bad. I've spent a lot of time in the past associating what I eat with how I judge myself. If I had a hunk of cake, I was a bad person, if I had a salad I was good. Even knowing that raw veggies upset my stomach, I would still feel good about myself for eating a salad, despite being curled up in the fetal position from the stomach pains. But at least I was "good".

In hind sight, it's easy to say that this was completely insane on many levels. In the first place, food is just food. It isn't good or evil, and consuming food doesn't make me good or evil. But more importantly, why judge myself at all? As an atheist, I don't believe anyone or anything is inherently good or evil, especially not food. But for some reason, I, and many fat chicks, feel the need to judge ourselves by what we eat or what the number on the scale is.

I think we need some perspective. Here is my list of foods that there is legitimate reasons for feeling good or bad about eating:

Bad Foods:

• Wheel bearings -- despite the high iron content, they hurt your teeth
• Chick peas -- they are nasty and feel like you're eating little tiny icky eyeballs. And worse, at parties they sometimes disguise themselves as cheese dip, when in fact, it is Hummus, which is ground chick peas, which is the only thing more evil than whole chick peas.
• Hitler's brain -- I saw a movie about this once. Not something one should eat.

Good Foods:

• What ever you need or perceive that you need to sustain your mind and body.

The point here, is that food and consuming food does not make you good or evil. Whether you are good or evil depends on your own definition, which, at least for me, changes from day to day, and minute to minute. Right now, my definition of "good" is someone who keeps the litter box clean. My definition might be something different in the morning, but it doesn't ever have to be anything more; I don't need to rate myself as good or evil, I just am.

Your mission -- should you choose to accept it -- is to just be. Don't call yourself good or bad, and if you feel you must make a judgment, make it over something real, not about something you ate. Unless you ate some chick peas, in which case, you probably are evil.