Food: A Love Story (4 page)

I am a fast eater. I normally am the first one to finish eating my entire plate of food at a restaurant, and then I have to just sit there and stare at everyone who has barely unfolded his or her napkin. I never know what to say. “Do you think they’re gonna bring back that basket of bread?”

My wife likes to pause before the meals with our kids and say grace. While I think this is a great opportunity for our children
to learn to appreciate the gifts that God has given them, I view grace as kind of the “On your mark, get set …” and the “Amen” as the “Go!” I am pretty sure that’s the way God intended it.

The faster we eat, the fatter we get. Statistics show that the amount of money spent on weight loss programs in the United States alone is much larger than the amount of money it would take to solve the world’s hunger problem. The answer to this dilemma seems perfectly simple: Americans should just start eating people from starving countries.

When you watch late-night television, it becomes abundantly clear that as a culture we are struggling with our weight and have little desire to make any real effort to remedy the situation. The exercise equipment and weight loss techniques sold late at night emphasize painless alternatives to actually eating less. Machines and routines that only take moments out of our busy lives between meals are constantly touted. I have even seen a late-night commercial for a pulsating belt that works your abs while you watch television. All these weight loss techniques point to the fact that we can’t stop eating. There are diet programs where all your meals are mailed to your home. How absurd. We can’t even be trusted to go out and buy the food we know we should eat. “You’ll just screw it up! I’ll do it!” We are totally out of control. We’re a country that loves to eat so much that instead of learning how to eat less, or honestly exercising, we find ways around it, like wiring our mouths shut and undergoing surgeries in which our stomachs are stapled smaller. “I don’t want to do something barbaric like exercising, so I’m just going to have someone vacuum the fat out of my body.”

Instead of eating less or spending money on get-thin-quick schemes, I have just accepted the fact that I, like most Americans, also have a totally unhealthy relationship with food and,
therefore, as a result, I’m overweight. As I mentioned earlier, the meal isn’t over for me until I feel sick. Instead of food giving me energy, I am always tired after I eat, which explains why I am always tired. I go to the gym just so I will stop eating for an hour, which, I believe, is the American form of fasting.

THE BUFFET RULE

If anything defines American eating, it is the quantity of food we consume. This would explain why the “All-You-Can-Eat Buffet” is such an American phenomenon, and it makes perfect sense that it started in Las Vegas. Some of the most amazing restaurants in the world are in Las Vegas, but the real local specialty is the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet. Buffets are as common in Vegas as glitter and regrettable behavior. The Vegas casino buffets are expansive and ridiculous. In other words, completely American. You can get sushi, mac and cheese, and doughnuts all in the same meal. God bless America. One of the main reasons that the all-you-can-eat buffet is a perfect fit for casinos is because the all-you-can-eat buffet is the food equivalent of gambling. And like all other forms of institutional gambling, it’s rigged for the house.

The all-you-can-eat buffets always feel like a challenge. “All-YOU-can-eat.” The unspoken rule of the all-you-can-eat buffet is that you must eat the food value of more than the cost of the buffet. My wife, Jeannie, finds this approach ridiculous, but then again she married me, so she doesn’t have the best judgment anyway. If the buffet is twenty bucks, you must eat at least twenty
dollars’ worth of food. If you eat twenty-one dollars’ worth of food, you make money, right? It’s a rule everyone knows. Eating your money’s worth at the buffet is a rule that should be known as the “Buffet Rule,” but apparently this term was already used for some tax theory proposed in 2011 that has absolutely nothing to do with buffets. I mean, where are our government’s priorities, really? I’m not saying my interpretation of the Buffet Rule is a wise one. I’ve never learned my lesson. I always approach a buffet with the same bluster. “All I can eat for twenty dollars? Ha, ha. This place is going to lose so much money.” Unfortunately, after half an hour I am always uncomfortably full and mumbling, “Let’s get out of here. This place is trying to hurt people. Why did I do this to myself?” It’s the overeating equivalent of losing your shirt at the craps table. It’s dangerous.

The all-you-can-eat title is especially hazardous for someone like me who likes to follow directions. When I approach a buffet, aside from seeing it as a challenge, there is a compliant part of me that hears “all you can eat” and says, “Okay, I will try my best. I don’t want to let you down, buffet.” The assumption is that I can control myself, that I understand self-restraint and portion control, and that I am some kind of nutritional scientist or an adult. There is something very American about the term “all-you-can-eat.” “Do you love your country? Prove it. Let’s see all YOU can eat.” Sometimes I hear other words in the phrase emphasized. It’s all you CAN eat, not all you WANT to eat. There’s part of me that is relieved that the CAN part is never enforced. I could see trying to leave a buffet, only to encounter some big bouncer: “Hey, hey, where do you think you’re going? Get back up there!” “But I don’t want any more food.” “Look, chubby, no one said this was an ‘all-you-want-to-eat’ buffet. It’s ‘all-you-CAN eat.’ Read the sign! I’ve seen your stand-up. You can eat more.” Really what most of us need is an all-you-
should
-eat buffet. “Wait a minute there, fella. Here’s your brunch. One apple and fifty sit-ups.”

CUP OF GRAVY

I suppose I’ve become desensitized to the level of unhealthy eating in America. An 80-ounce soda, all-you-can-eat buffets, and a Wendy’s Triple only seem like logical options to me. I love the rare moments when I’m truly surprised by American eating.

A while ago I was back in Indiana in my hometown walking around the Kmart, or, as we called it, “the mall.” You can typically find just about anything you need in one of these “big box” stores like Walmart and Kmart. What I especially love about Kmart is the ambience. I always feel like I’ve entered a store that was just attacked by a flash mob. Everything always looks and feels a little disheveled. There will be some random empty shelf. There’s always a huge corner display tower of sale products that looks like it will collapse on you if you breathe on it. There will be a broken jar in one aisle and an abandoned sock in the next. The selection and layout suggest that this might not be the ideal place to buy a suit or use a public restroom. Anyway, on this fine day I was looking for diapers when I saw a seventy-year-old man walking around the Kmart drinking something I realized later was a cup of KFC gravy.

Now, in full disclosure, I love gravy. Who doesn’t, really? It’s
gravy
, after all … but I’ve never considered gravy a beverage. Even in my most private moments with gravy I’ve never contemplated taking a swig. This is coming from someone who drank a product called Yoo-hoo on many occasions as a teenager. The thing I found most impressive was that not only was this stranger drinking gravy, he also wasn’t even trying to hide it. When I first spotted the stranger, I saw the KFC Styrofoam cup, saw him take a drink, and assumed … well, obviously this guy is
not
drinking gravy. Then I encountered him again standing in front of me in the checkout line. It was at that moment I saw the thick brown liquid in the cup and confirmed that it was, in fact, a cup of KFC gravy he was drinking. And then, almost as if to prove a point, he turned around and took a sip right in front of me. Our eyes met, and he gave me a warm Midwestern smile as if to say, “Hey, how’s it going?” I nodded and said hello and was only a bit more than slightly tempted to exclaim, “You realize you’re drinking gravy, right?”

I don’t know what the events were that led up to this stranger drinking the cup of gravy in that Kmart. I like to think he walked into KFC with the intention of drinking gravy. Maybe his order was simple.

“Yeah I’ll have the large mashed potatoes and gravy. And hold the mashed potatoes.” Maybe in order to avoid judgment or scorn, he ordered the mashed potatoes, got the gravy on the side, and just threw the mashed potatoes away. Or maybe he really could have cared less what anyone thought, which is more likely, since he seemed like a proud gravy drinker greeting the cashier while she scanned his heart medication.

I’m no health nut, but I can only imagine what this guy’s next medical checkup was like. I picture a doctor in a white coat glancing down at a chart as he walks into an examination room with our gravy drinker sitting on the examination table.
The doctor would then tilt his head to the right, perplexed by the results on the chart:

DOCTOR:
Mr. Jones, I’ve got your cholesterol levels here. (
beat
) Okay, you are aware your blood is not moving?

GRAVY DRINKER:
(
nods
)

DOCTOR:
This is kind of a strange question. Um. You haven’t been drinking gravy, have ya? Because based on the test results you’re, like, 90 percent meat by-product.

GRAVY DRINKER:
(
nods
)

DOCTOR:
We’re going to have to register you with the government.

I guessed the age of our gravy drinker to be around seventy, but I have no idea how old he was or how long he had been drinking gravy. Maybe he was younger. Maybe gravy drinking is one of those rapid-aging behaviors, like smoking. Or maybe he was an even older guy and the gravy-drinking habit had plumped out his wrinkles so he actually looked younger. I suppose his unique consumption of his gravy cup was voluntary, but I honestly don’t know. Maybe his wife was just trying to kill him.

GRAVY DRINKER:
Honey, I’m going to Kmart.

WIFE:
Well, why don’t you have a cup of gravy?

GRAVY DRINKER:
Well, I guess I could …

WIFE:
And why don’t you sign this additional life insurance policy?

GRAVY DRINKER:
Boy, you love buying life insurance.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF AMERICAN FOOD

People look at a map of the United States and see different things. Some people see red states and blue states. Some see North and South. Some see East and West. I see food. I’m not saying the geographical areas of the United States actually look edible to me (not yet, anyway), although I once saw a potato chip shaped like Alaska. Unfortunately, I ate it before I could take a photo. Anyway, my point is, I travel a great deal as a stand-up comedian. I’ve performed in all fifty states and eaten my way through pretty much every major city. After my fourth or fifth lap of performing and eating across our beautiful and delicious country, I started to think of the geography of our country as it relates to food.