Hunger Well. Food Politics Digression. Happy Hour Pizza. Late Night Soup.

This post is the result of a humbling experience of truly bottomless, unfathomable hunger throughout the day yesterday.  I don’t know what my deal was, but I couldn’t stop motoring through food.  My tongue turned into a conveyer belt.  My teeth the opening of a tree grinding and mulching machine, complete with that awful sound.  I was hungry and shaky from the time I got up until I went to bed, finally satiated, at midnight.  This experience was a reminder that no matter how much improved, how newly meticulous, how vegetable vigilant I am, the body and all its conditionings and desires and biological humming will have its victories.  Yesterday was one such victory.

My breakfast was tame enough: 2 hardboiled eggs, a toasted roll, and a lot of coffee.  Two hours later, I was shaking as I read Sheridan’s School for Scandal and it wasn’t because of this line

Lady Betty Curricle was taking the dust in Hyde Park in a sort of duodecimo phaeton, [and] desired me to write some verses on her ponies, upon which I took out my pocket-book and in one moment produced the following: ‘Sure never were seen two such beautiful ponies; other horses are clowns, and these – macaronis. Nay, to give ‘em this title I’m sure isn’t wrong, their legs are so slim and their tails are so long.’

I cranked the A/C and heated up a bowl of my delicious soup.

I was still shaking and hungry after this huge bowl of soup so I had a vine tomato.

After showering and sniff testing clothes for class, I was still hungry so I rinsed some cherries for a class snack.  I was inches from burying my face in the yet unopened Cheetos bag and humbly picking cheese dust from my eyebrows and bangs.  I told myself, “Just keep eating fruit, Gina.  The urban T-Rex feeling will go away soon.”  So, here’s the bag of cherries.

By the time I came home from class and a trip to the USPS to mail Story 2 into the void, I was, once again, hungry.  I whipped up a Boca Chikn on a piece of multigrain roll, accompanied by my favorite toppings.

As I munched (mulched?) through this delectable snack, I perused my usual internets and came across Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop newsletter touting her feelings of levity after completing a three week detox program called “Clean.”  I investigated further and found Dr. Alexander “Crazy Eyes” Junger, the genius behind developing a system of powders and beverages and selling it to celebrities.  He might as well have a cart, a hand hewn wooden sign, and a collection of frosted glass bottles filled with elixirs.  For $350, you can buy the Clean Ultimate Kit.  If you want an individual supplement called “Move,” described as, “a natural fiber. It promotes bowel movements, feeds the beneficial bacteria, binds to toxins and thus prevents their reabsorption, calms feelings of hunger,” you will be out $15 per 12 oz. bottle.  Kale is much less expensive, as are black beans, and both are natural and quite fiberfull.  Aside from being a character out of Jackson and McCartney’s video for Say Say Say, Junger is reinforcing the paradigm of health as a luxury for those that can afford it.  Health is something one buys.  There are books and powders and concoctions.  He is creating a need and then charging for its antidote.  Here is what he has to say about feeling hungry.  This is taken from a PDF manual about Clean:

Consider the possibility that you don’t really know what being HUNGRY is.  In our cities, very few know hunger.  What we call hunger is often just the desire to eat.  The body sensation that we interpret as HUNGER is many times more accurately distinguished as boredom, anxiety, fear or another negative emotion if let alone and observed.  This is a golden opportunity.  What that sensation arises, do nothing. Be aware of it and keep your attention on it.  Ask yourself; what is this sensation? Soon enough you will notice it disappears without any food consumed.  If done often times, you may succeeed RENAMING it altogether.  Doing so will prevnt you from eating for the wrong reasons.

Aside from problematic grammar and sentence structure, there is much to be dissected in this statement.  What would a Palm Springs/NYC snake oiler to the stars know about hunger “in our cities?”  Yes, hunger is the desire to eat, to be nourished by foods that aren’t inert and on shelves for years at a time.  His pricy services are meant for those who are wealthy enough to buy and vulnerable enough to believe maxims about the Fountain of Youth and turning one’s intestines from pack horses to thoroughbreds.  Poverty and obesity go hand in hand in this country because of the quality of food available to those without the income to afford otherwise.  These foods are absent nutrients so even those who can afford to eat them are still hungry.  A lack of good nutrition affects physical and intellectual development which then affects education which then affects quality of life.  And around we go.  Food and nutrition has a direct link to disenfranchisement.  Only this week, I heard a story on NPR about how the recent increase in food stamp monies per month is only now enabling parents to purchase healthy quantities of fresh vegetables and lean meats for themselves and their children.  Also implicit in Junger’s idiotic statement is the fact that hunger is nothing.  Hunger can be overcome by doing nothing.  One must be aware of hunger, keep attention on it, but no one has to do anything.  Hunger is to be observed like a specimen on a cork board.

So anyway, yesterday evening I headed down to Apropos to Happy Hour with my third year fiction peeps.  I had two such Sam Adams.

I also split a Happy Hour pizza with CVW.  Mushrooms and pepperoni here, glistening in the late afternoon sun.  I got out of there for $6.15.

I rounded out my evening with episodes of Law and Order SVU and…another bowl of soup at 11:30 p.m.  I was still hungry so I had a bowl of soup at 11:30 p.m.  At least it’s chock full of nutrients and protein.

I woke up feeling not like I felt yesterday.  I started my day with 2 hardboiled eggs, an attempt to eat another white flesh peach (attempt not completed), and some cherries.  As usual, this repast accompanied by more coffee than is healthy.