Homework 18 Illness and Dying

Christopher R
1A

On Thanksgiving, all that we know to be true about food, in terms of how much of it should we eat and what kinds of food are better to eat then others are disregarded. The vegetables that are prepared take a back seat to the turkey, ham, stuffing, macaroni and cheese and all other foods. This could be seen something “anti-body” because after eating this food you have to sit down or go to sleep. While most people eat until they are no longer hungry on Thanksgiving you eat until you are no longer able to function. The more plates of food consumed the more effective the holiday was used. It’s the one excuse to eat as much as possible and not get judged or have to think about the diet you were recently on. A “body-centered” view that our culture has is eat a balanced meal. This way you won’t get obese and look unappealing to everyone.

At the Thanksgiving table were I was only one person decided to keep this idea in mind. The only thing she ate was a piece of ham, some cabbage, and small piece of turkey. My uncle however did the opposite and ate, about 3 servings of macaroni and cheese, 3 servings of turkey, 2 servings of ham, 2 servings of stuffing, 1 slice of red velvet cake, 1 slice of cheese cake, 1 slice of strawberry cake, and 1 slice of pumpkin pie. According to him dieting is only for people who are inactive and as long as he goes around the block a couple of times he’ll be okay, eating this much food was not a problem for him. I would classify this as an “anti-body” thing considering his torso resembled Homer Simpson’s and it almost looked as if he was forcing himself to eat this much. Compared to him everyone else’s food choice seemed “body-centered” stopping after one plate but going back every now and then picking up an extra serving of one or to things and trying to reframe from eating more pie.

The food pleasure dominated the event seeing as that was the main focus of the conversation even after the food was made and could no longer be edited. With each new food eaten, someone would ask if it was as good as last year or compared to someone else. Whenever one person thought that one dish was the best another one of my family members would ask “Is it as good as the way I make it?” And my uncle would say “This food is real good, if I go to someone’s house and they make food that I don’t like I would definitely tell them because If I don’t they won’t know how to make it.” Then there was my 89 year old grandmother who doesn’t talk a lot who spoke after done eating and said “This food was real good. It taste like the food I used to make, I taught all of you how to cook real good”. Instead of watching football my family likes to eat food then talk about the food and who cooks it best. Instead of debating a controversial call in a game of “pig-skin” my family debates the controversial call of who makes the best ham.

The background elements related to illness and dying is probably shown through the people in my family, asthma and diabetes is something that has been in my family for a long time. Also many people in my family were overweight but the person who has been the most sick was my grandmother. She was in the hospital because she was having heart problems in 2007. No one talks about that anymore but because she’s so old when my mother was giving her early Christmas presents my aunt said, “Christmas isn’t promised to her”. That kind of killed the mood but it also made everyone enjoy her presence much more than before the statement.