Life is About Good Food

 Hello. C J here. So this blog is half about games and the other half food. This is intentional. Fun fact. Most people who study diet and healthy eating who actually want to be healthy and not just be thin and on the cover of a magazine agree that the Mediterranean diet is the best one on the planet. It’s high in olive oil, fatty fish, vegetables, rice and lean meat. It is everything a person needs to be healthy and people in the regions of the world that eat this diet are typically very long lived.

This would be Italy, Greece, Morocco and some of the other nearby nations. I think though that we’re missing something here. It’s not just that the food is healthy, which it is, or that it’s high in heart and brain healthy vitamins, which it is, it’s the fact that the people in Italy, Greece and Morocco all eat purely for enjoyment. Food in these nations and their cultures is to be celebrated as the sole meaning of life and the sole means of obtaining love and friendship from others.

They overeat. They eat more than they need. They don’t just eat food. They eat for enjoyment. The extra calories might mean they gain a bit of weight every now and then. Who cares? They don’t have fashion magazines in these cultures to tell them they’re wrong. Being a bit overweight in most cultures outside North America is seen as a sign of good health. Because it is. Eating is what the word healthy means. All of this can be summed up in one word. Gusto.

Gusto means literally eating with enjoyment and enthusiasm. Let me give you a few examples. In Italian culture the day is spent making and eating pasta with your friends. Friends or family? I don’t know. I’m Scottish. I’m not supposed to be able to tell the two apart. If you eat a meal with someone more than once then they’re pretty much both regardless of which culture you’re from. In Italian culture what you do with your day and most of your night is pasta.

You hand make it or, if you’re in a rush, buy it at a store. You boil it with excessive amounts of salt purely for flavour. You take it and drain it and throw things at it. You violently and aggressively hurl other food items in the direction of a bowl of penne or orzo after coating it in olive oil, butter, tomatoes, or all three. You find things in your pantry you didn’t know you had and put them in the pasta. And the pasta will thank you for it by being eaten. Then you carry bowls of steaming lunch or dinner out to a table, often outdoors, and eat and eat and eat with your whole family, all your friends and most of the street you live on. Then, when lunchtime is over it’s time to start on pasta for dinner.

And then there’s Greece. In Greece food is made seriously, at least it is in the Greek restaurants near where I live. Gone is the improvisation of their neighbours Italy. Italy does whatever it wants with its food, Greek restaurants follow the recipes from Greece to the letter. Greece has only so many dishes that are considered to be classic to their cuisine. There is souvlaki, pork or chicken cubes on a skewer, pasticio, moussaka, baklava and rice. There’s roast chicken and seafood everywhere and garlic lemon potatoes. All done properly.

But then it’s time to eat. The whole family are gathered and the second the food and the platters touch the tables everyone shouts Opa! They break out the ouzo, licorish wine, and drink and eat and drink and eat and dance and celebrate their shared love of food. This is how life is lived in the Mediterranean. People who research the food here of course are from North America and miss the point. Life here is lived solely and only to eat more food and to have more people to do it with. That’s why they live longer. Because they know how to live in the present tense.

My point is that these cultures live a long time because they enjoy and celebrate food and, by doing so, actually like their lives and the people they live with. Sharing food with friends and family is to any healthy Scottish person the sole and only meaning life will ever have or need. And here in Canada we complain when we eat a single Oreo cookie because it’s fattening. Shut up. Eat spaghetti. It’ll fix it.

C J Mcpherson