Imperfect Metaphor

The metaphor that came to me on my morning run is inexact, but because it has stuck with me I'll write about it anyway.

During my recent involvement with the Stephanie Atwood Belly Fat Blow-Out book / eating program, I've spend some time contemplating the nature of processed foods (the program is against them). Here's how I see it. First we put a basic food (be it plant or animal) in a machine to smash it to smithereens and leach out most of its natural, healthy components. Then we add in a few artificially created vitamins and minerals, mix the results with some guar gum (a binder made from beans stripped of their nutrients by dehulling and smushing), ascorbic acid (a preservative made by fermenting sugar with black mold), lotsa sugar or carcinogenic artificial sweeteners, plenty of salt, and artificial color. Then we pour the goo we've made into some kind of mold or container, slap a clever wrapper or label on it (Animated characters anyone? Cute, anthropomorphized farm animals maybe? Happy chickens?) and stock the shelves at the Safeway or the mini-mart with it.

When we buy it and eat it, it feels good in our mouth--sweet, chewy, filling. Thanks to the robust marketing industry in our culture, which fills up our senses with pleasing images and promises everywhere we look--I'll wait a minute while you close that pop-up--we feel good eating many different "food" products that are made by some version of the process I've outlined above. 

I love parks. They may be artificial additives, but they're additives I appreciate!

Yeah, I know, well, duh. So where's the metaphor? It popped into my mind as I ran in a very urbanized area this morning--Northridge, California. I made my way up one of the main commercial arteries looking for what on the map appeared to be a bike path (it wasn't one). Along the way I saw what I believe was every fast-food joint ever created and corporatized on this planet. Then I also saw a huge storefront surmounted by the word "Vitamins" in big red letters. As I waited at the corner for the light to change, I took in the fast food palaces, the vitamin store, and all the glum commuters sitting isolated in their cars as they stopped-and-goed in the heavy traffic. 

Then it came to me--we are highly processed humans. It's like we've been dropped in some huge cultural centrifuge and spun until we're smashed to smithereens. We've had the vitality we were born with leached out of us and so are forced to shop at the vitamin store to try and recover it. We pride ourselves in reading food labels--from this one I'll get calcium, from this one fiber, from this one vitamin C--and because we're good at it, we supply our bodies with the nutritional equivalent of guar gum and ascorbic acid in the hopes they will restore us to the vital creatures we were at birth. 

Alternative metaphor? 

We also "exercise," be it in a gym or a yoga studio--this in place of the constant running, moving, lifting, skipping, and singing that our early ancestors practiced. Then we put our butts in oversized, ecologically ruinous conveyances--only one person per behemoth vehicle, please--and drive to work where we spend some more motionless hours. I'm not going to beat this dead horse (speaking of metaphors); you get the idea.

All is not lost, however. My run took me to Cal State Northridge, where I ferreted out the sports complex. Sadly, the track and the fields are closed to the public, and yeah, what's up with that; but the very existence of these huge exercise venues indicates that, broken and then ineffectively patched up though we may be, as a species we yearn to be in motion, which is really the same as yearning to be healthy.

It's not the World Series, but it's October
baseball at Cal State Northridge!

I feel blessed to live in Pleasanton, a town of 74,000 that boasts 44 parks. We people love parks. We love open space. We love trees. We love wildlife, even when it's only crows and squirrels. So I offer two ways to feed that love: First, don't read labels so much to see what's been added as to see what's not been taken out. Second, close this screen you're looking at right now, stand up, put on your sturdy shoes, and walk to the nearest park. Let's act as a reminder to the world that people were made to run, move, lift, skip, and sing.