It is mid-morning, and light has long since broken in wide, bright shards over Los Angeles. Despite the fact that it is the weekend and I am old enough to be past my school days, there is the thought of the first day of school in the air that only the dawn of September can bring.
That feeling of a blank slate, a new year spread out before you.
Sharp little thrill of possibility popping in your stomach so that you have to halt mid-step and suck in breath.
I am just back from my first serious shopping trip to my neighborhood farmers’ market. Not a Los Angeles native, I am always slightly shocked when these stalls – fresh, fully stocked, earthy – emerge every week, interrupting the city’s sun-blanched decrepitude like a patch of dead grass that has suddenly sprouted a rogue dandelion. But I arrive, one of the early ones, and here it all is: local, organic grapefruits as big as both of my father’s fists, loaves of wholegrain bread with sunflower seeds pressed into the crust, heaps and heaps of the most beautiful green beans I’ve seen in a long time, and buckets and buckets of flowers.
It was, as I say, my first serious shopping trip to my local farmer’s market, or really to any farmers’ market. I’ve been to this market before, of course, but mostly out of curiosity and to experience that jolt of nostalgia that accompanies bustling among produce and flower vendors, much as I can imagine generations before me must have done daily. And, if I am honest, perhaps also out of some somewhat smug feeling of eating chemical-free peaches and supporting local growers instead of big agribusinesses (and at the same time, no less). ‘Voting with the trolley,’ I am told the British call it.
But today is different. Today the shopping is not about nostalgia or feeling smug; it is serious. It is serious because today marks the first day of my year of eating organically. That, in any case, is the plan.
Or, if not a fully-fledged plan, at least an inkling, a whisper of an idea.
An inkling of what, you may ask?
I’ll be perfectly frank. As it stands now, my relationship to food is rife with desire and denial, with anxiety and guilt. There is joy and pleasure, yes, and also a sense of camaraderie involved in preparing and eating foods. But there is also no denying that no matter how much I try to pretend otherwise, there is an endless loop playing in the back of my head: Whoops, too much butter in that, I’d better lay off … Oh alright, just one little bite … What the heck, I’ll eat the whole thing. I don’t want to look like one of those girls who can’t eat a cookie. But then, what about my weight? How do I “lose it,” or “keep it off,” or “maintain it”? Still, all of this, even after figuring out long ago that I should be perfectly happy with the body I’ve got. Still, the anxiety.
And so the question is: How do you get this anxiety over weight to stop? Or, put differently: How do you go about changing your relationship to food and eating?
To be honest, I haven’t a clue. But I do have an inkling, a whisper of an idea … that if I steep myself in eating organically (and locally and seasonally as much as possible), that my criteria on what it means to eat healthily will begin to shift, and some of the anxiety, the endless loop playing in the back of my head, will start to erode and break apart. I hope to find a different way of conceptualizing health. And to make gloriously fresh, seasonal, yummy food in the process.
I’ll admit that it’s a big project for organic food to do on its own. Maybe too big. But it’s morning on the first day of September, I have just bought my first stock of organic produce, and I am gripped with that fresh-as-daisies feeling of new beginnings and that sharp, popping feeling of possibility rising in my stomach.
