Here is a most interesting, if longish piece, about fish oil. My doctor recently announced to me that I have high cholesterol, even though my BMI, whatever that even is, is fine or something, and that it, the cholesterol, is probably genetic, but that I should try to “bring it down with diet.” I came home crestfallen. I’ve been trying to eat “sensibly,” as defined by my feelings at any given moment, for years now. I have managed to “sort of” bring my weight down “with diet,” but that is a measurable endeavor, one that I can see in the mirror on any given day, or by the enervating rite of trying to stuff myself into my clothes. Cholesterol, on the other hand, is something I can neither see, nor feel, nor, by myself, measure.
As with all discouraging and calamitous moments of ignorance, I came home and looked on the internet. The first thing I learned is that I should eat oatmeal…which isn’t going to happen. I’m not doing that. I have eaten enough oatmeal, mainly in boarding school, to satisfy that dictum. I am not even going to eat baked oatmeal. I would rather, in a very practical and real sense, since I’m not willing to do it, die. The second thing I learned is that I should start lapping up fish oil.
I must pause at this point and say, of course, that I didn’t check the veracity of either of these internet pearls. I assume they are true, what with their being on the internet. Furthermore, desire to solve my problem matches my desire to check my sources. As in, I have very little. Mostly I just want to get through the day without eating oatmeal or choking down a fish oil pellet.
Herein lies the problem. Knowledge does not produce desire. Knowing something is true does not do very much to change the inclination of the will. I know that I should do some stuff to be healthier, but it doesn’t make me want to take the steps to make it happen. I think I’ve just repeated myself there. This is a spiritual problem, of course (both the repetition and the disorders of desire) but it is more complicated than that.
Because I do have to eat. And, when eating, I am not just fixing my cholesterol and staving off certain death through starvation. I am confronting, by means of food, my bountiful tendency to Gnosticism. I am grounding myself in material reality. When I eat something, it’s not just the body that’s fed, it’s my whole self. The senses, the rituals, the food itself reaches past the mortal frame to the mind and heart.
It’s not just me, I want to point out. Everybody knows this—every person gripping a menu, facing the anguished moment of decision, the certain regret of having chosen the wrong dish, every hunched over stressed spirit devouring now cold and clammy tater-tots at the kitchen counter, every heart calmed by the luxury of a bagel lathered in jam, every virtuous grasp of a bowl of plain unadorned salad, the illicit “rewarding” self-caring tub of ice cream afterwards. Human people eat not just with their mouths but with their souls, often to their own demise.
I’m in the middle of Three Men in a Boat, which a person should read every ten years or so, and here’s a funny and brilliant bit.
How good one feels when one is full—how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. One feels so forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested meal—so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted. It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon, it says, “Work!” After beefsteak and porter, it says, “Sleep!” After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don’t let it stand more than three minutes), it says to the brain, “Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!” After hot muffins, it says, “Be dull and soulless, like a beast of the field—a brainless animal, with listless eye, unlit by any ray of fancy, or of hope, or fear, or love, or life.” And after brandy, taken in sufficient quantity, it says, “Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that your fellow-men may laugh—drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless sounds, and show what a helpless ninny is poor man whose wit and will are drowned, like kittens, side by side, in half an inch of alcohol.” We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father—a noble, pious man.
Or, to say it in the vein of the article linked above, compressing tons of fish into a tiny capsule doesn’t produce substantial, integrated health, not only for the oceans, from which all that fish is strained, but for the person who will apparently be helped by the peculiar oil oozing out of the little critters. Better, not only for your body but even more critically for your mind, to eat a piece of fish, than to squeeze the oil out and swallow it as a pill.
But perhaps you don’t like fish. Well, then, like me with oatmeal, we two may lean back, scroll once more through Facebook, and await death.
Or you could get yourself a copy of Posh Food, a Penguin Handbook, and read this about lobsters,
For those who would rather cook the lobsters themselves at home than have a namby-pamby chef serving it up with tears in his eyes, a word of warning. You should always buy lobsters alive.
Ah well, that won’t be me either. Instead I will go and lavish my attention over eight whole little tilapia I found at Price Rite, their silvery plump frozen selves calling out for a trinity of butter, herbs, and salt. A little heat, a little folding of the hands in prayer, and the body, soul, and mind will gather together for a feast of health and life wrung out of the ocean’s depths.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In