Food and People: A Special Relationship

There are a few "special relationships" that everyone knows about: the US and the UK, Bill and Monica, Fat Kids and Cake which takes me to the whole food and folks thing.

As I was warming up left over chicken and my famous mac'n'cheese'n'pepper I was caught by memory blow back. As a child I was at my great-uncle Emory's house for dinner, he's dying I think, and the old folk, who I know know would have only been in their 40s then, were talking. That dinner would have been something southern, fried chicken is the only thing I can for sure remember. Fried chicken was a treat, the family has a history of bad tickers and fried and salty didn't happen in my house because of that. 

The even bigger treat, the chicken was fried skin on. (I know, I know, it sounds revolting but fried skin [with the exception of bagged  pork rinds] is one of those things that is somehow is life-changingly delicious.) But that treat was ruined after the meal when I heard my father's Aunt Barb discussing the meal with a man, who I believe is her ex-husband. At some point someone said, "They says [sic] chicken skin causes's [sic] the cancer [sic]." (It might not have been that bad but that's how I hear them.) And I felt a lump in my throat, my heart beat was heavier and I knew that the meal I had just eaten was now killing me.

Ok, so I'm a bit excitable and now that I am an adult (as I occasionally assert publicly) I know that even if chicken skin causes cancer I'd have to eat it in mass quantities over a long period of time. Its amazing to me that food has the ability to cause so much fear, but food is a nicest for life.

Food and I have an especially strange relationship. I have food allergies, strange ones, and I can't consume carbs like a normal human because I was blessed with a metabolism that is so efficient that it forgets to metabolize.  Today I was considering  making gumbo, a good hearty meal but it contains shrimp which I'll eat but the family won't (fear of swimming things, I think) and okra, which I love but cannot eat for fear of death, so I stuck with chicken and macaroni and life.

If I eat okra or kiwis I die, if I don't eat I die. If I eat what I want everyday I die early of a heart attack or stroke and am ostracized for being severely obese, if I eat what I should I am unsatisfied.

Food and people it's all about balance, as long as you can balanced on both your feet while walking up a flight of stairs you're doing it right.

(HAHA don't believe the last sentence, you're in trouble if that's your guide)