Dinner With Dieters - Redux

Okay, I can’t seem to leave this subject alone. Again, I spent a weekend with some friends, and it was very clear that the female side of this couple was constantly making food choices of a dietary nature. There was a concentration and calculation evident that was unnerving to me. Every morsel had to be mentally weighed and evaluated for substantive nutritional value and caloric consequence.

It was both fascinating and horrifying to me, as hostess to this person. I had the feeling that whatever I had chosen to serve these people was wrong—even though I clearly chose foods that were high in nutrition and had made healthy ‘choices’ possible, I felt I hadn’t done enough. Worse, I felt that even serving food at all had sabotaged this person’s efforts.

Woe is me.

It reinforced my sense that we are fast losing our ability to enjoy food. The food that we all centered our family and societal rituals around was now the enemy—not to be trusted, and never to be given into. It really made me feel uncomfortable to be around. I longed for a nice smiling, chubby dinner guest who complimented my efforts effusively.

I wonder how many other people are out there making preparations for dinner guests and weekend guest and are absolutely agonizing over what to serve and how much of it should be available. Too little looks skimpy and cheap—too much looks reckless and even hostile. It becomes a hostess’s nightmare, and there is no winning situation here. If you serve great food, a certain number of your guests will be inclined to turn their nose up at it, even BECAUSE it is so good and tempting. And no one wants to serve bad food, or food that doesn’t please both visually and gastronomically.

So I will entertain my guests as usual, and I’ll watch them turn away. I’ll watch the fevered calculation and the fear and self-loathing they experience when placing something delicious on their plate. I’ll watch their doubt and their regret.
These people sure have taken the pleasure out of entertaining. Much of life is no fun anymore.