The Third Commandment: Eat up!

May 22, 2:38 PMSt. Louis Presbyterian ExaminerAlicia Donathan

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It is significant that when God created mankind, He put us in a garden.  He surrounded man with "trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food." (Gen.2:9)  Then what was the first command God gave us?  I mean, after He told us to have sex and rule the earth?  

"I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.  They will be yours for food." (Gen. 1:29)

One of the first things God told us was that the world is edible.  But we would have to work to bring these edible things to the dinner table; we would have to be gardeners.  

Implicit in this command is the assumption that we know basically how to eat.  Perhaps Adam didn't know everything when he first put his hands to the dirt or first tasted one of the garden's many fruits and vegetables, but he at least must have had some basic instincts about how to eat.  Adam would likely have started tasting, digging, observing the parts of the plants, experimenting with dropping them in the ground, and learning, by trial and error, how to be a farmer and how to be a cook. God didn't give any more explicit instructions than, "Eat!"  He must have thought we had the in-built tools to navigate the edible world without direct instructions.  

And yet we in America now rely on the expertise of scientists with Ph.D.'s to tell us how to eat.  We have somehow forgotten this simple life-skill.  

Michael Pollan argues in his Omnivore's Dilemma and more recently in his In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto that this is an unnatural and unhelpful state of affairs.  It is very odd that we have come to a place in history and society where the average person is directed in his eating by scientists who possess special knowledge, generally inaccessible to the layman.  A basic understanding of how to eat has somehow escaped us.  The average American no longer sees plants, animals, fungi, or cow's milk when he looks at food; rather, he sees nutrients, which are of course invisible, and require highly trained biochemists to interpret for us.  And nutrient-vision requires the makers of processed food to communicate the existence, attributes, and proportions of these invisible materials to us via their food packaging and advertising.  All this serves to separate us from one of the most fundamental connections we have to the earth: the plants and animals we eat.

Pollan is full of these and other helpful insights that can help us rethink our eating, and aid us in renewing our zeal and skill in fulfilling the third command God gave:  "Eat up!"

Pollan will speak tonight at the St. Louis County Library Headquarters (1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd) at 7:00 p.m. on this and related subjects.  Check it out!

 For more info:  Pollan was interviewed on KWMU Wednesday.  You can hear the interview on KWMU's website.