I have no idea how many times I’ve driven past the sign posted at the exit to Santy’s Taco Shop in the City Market/Country Center, without ever noticing it.
Granted, you are watching for other things as you drive into the Country Center. Monster potholes, for example.
And also, I’m usually composing a shopping list in my mind, so that I can get in and out of City Market without meeting anyone I know, and having to spend 20 minutes talking with them about the weather.
But for some reason, I finally noticed the sign last week.
EAT MORE !!
Such a simple, yet ultimately profound, message.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s precisely what’s wrong with the world today. We need to eat more.
There are so many benefits to eating more, a person cannot list them all. But I will try and mention the most important ones.
Most importantly, eating occupies time. When you’re sitting down eating a meal … and I do hope you are sitting down, because scientists have found that eating while standing up makes all of the food collect in your feet… anyway, when you’re sitting down eating, you have a matchless excuse for putting off, until later, certain tasks.
Certain unpleasant tasks.
Mowing the lawn, for example. No one can expect you to mow the lawn when you are eating. It’s nearly impossible to mow a lawn, properly, while eating.
Ditto, vacuuming the living room. Cleaning the cat box. Changing the engine oil. Filing your taxes.
Eating more does not eliminate these tasks, but it does move their accomplishment further into the future, where they belong.
One of the best things about eating is, food costs money. As we all know, one of the key goals in life is to earn money, and then spend it. If you spend $100 on food, eventually the food will be consumed, and you can earn more money and spend it tomorrow. (Or whenever you get your paycheck.) But if you spend $100 on plastic crap from Walmart, and regularly repeat that practice, pretty soon you have boxes of plastic crap stacked up in the garage, and then in the laundry room, and then in the hallway, and then… you know exactly what I mean.
The more food you eat, the more you can spend, without unnecessary impacts to your living space.
There’s also a political impact to eating more.
The 2023 Farm Bill is yet to be approved by the House of Representatives — and good luck with that ever happening at the rate things are going — but if it actually does happen, that means the federal government will continue paying farmers (read: enormous, obscenely profitable, agricultural corporations) billions of dollars to not grow crops they are entirely capable of growing, in order to keep food prices artificially inflated.
If we would just eat more food, maybe we could have decent food prices without massive taxpayer subsidies paid to farm corporations who are growing nothing.
But I may be going out on a limb, there.
Another aspect of eating more food comes to mind. President Joe Biden recently announced a proposal to send $10 billion in military aid to Israel.
If Biden had actually understood how the world works, and had instead spent $10 billion giving food to starving Palestinians in Gaza, maybe Hamas wouldn’t have started the war. It’s a well known fact that people are less willing to start wars, when they’ve just eaten a big meal.
There again, maybe I’m going out on a limb. I just know how I personally feel, at the conclusion of a Thanksgiving dinner.
And speaking of nice meals… when I finally noticed that ‘EAT MORE !!’ sign at Santy’s Taco Shop last week… I realized I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.
So I pulled into Santy’s parking lot and ordered two fish tacos, to go. When I got home, I found the tacos to be delightfully tasty. Perfectly cooked fish (cod?) topped with a rich Ranch-style dressing and fresh, homemade Pico de Gallo.
I should have ordered four tacos. Or maybe five.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.