When I cook, I eat my own cooking. The most difficult part is limiting my quality assurance tastings. I need to make sure there’s enough left for the dinner table. The alchemy of aromas, flavors and spices make cooking a sensual experience that cuts to my psyche.
Avoiding this pleasure is like an act of martyrdom reserved for the religious, fad dieters and political prisoners. Note: As a fad dieter, I do it weekly.
For fun, if you look you will see that the best bakers and brewers have bellies, unless they have a counter balancing calorie burning regiment. Why? Because they Eat Their Own Cooking.
The purpose of this caffeine-fueled musing is to bring light to the kind of food we consume and share most: Information.
Your social media posts, the books you read, the music you listen to. Everything we consume is food. And what we consume and what we share impacts those that see it.
Food is information and information is food and what we share alters the mood.
NewsFeeding
There is a reason why we call it the ‘News feed.’ It is our digital trough and like pigs we run to the trough every morning, noon and night to feast upon information delights.
We feed and feed and feed and share from the buffet of our minds. It’s the ultimate bottomless-refill to go with a truly unlimited buffet. Better yet:
The monetary cost of entry is Zero. The emotional cost on you is Mucho.
With the no-cost to entry, the internet makes it possible for all of us to shop at the information equivalent to Whole Foods, or the local Farmers Market. Identifying these sources is difficult, and requires some reading, but if you choose to eat at the informational equivalent of McDonald’s and choose to be ignorant of the source of your information meal, you are the problem. Because…
You are what you eat.
Shit is shit no matter what spices you spice it with. If you eat a cow that never saw the sky, is injected with growth hormones and eats its own shit, what are you? A man? Yes. After 20 years of this behavior be sure to tell your heart surgeon. Your ignorance paid for her schooling.
Do you read the labels on your food? Do you care? Do you take pictures of your third meal of veal of the day and share it on Facebook?
As we have a responsibility to ourselves and our dependents as to what we are eating, I propose we use the same approach to our information diet as we do to our food diet.
What’s in your feed?
Would you continue visiting and consuming food from a restaurant that makes you ill after each meal? Hopefully not, unless you were using hormesis to strengthen your digestive tract.
If you have children would you willingly feed your children food that you know harms their growth?
Have a serious look at your digital feed. Is it full of information that nourishes, enlightens and strengthens? Or, does what you see make your stomach turn?
Are your friends serving plates of e.coli-infused burrito bowls, or are they sharing sensibly-sourced, organic information?
I hear the comments, “But, we need to be informed! There’s a lot of shit going on! I wanna be mad, bro! Why are you not mad, tho!?”
Know that your likes and complaining posts are gold for the power hungry:
“The worst fate in the world for a man who yearns fame, glory or power is to be ignored.” — Robert Greene
Shit kills: Mad Cow Disease and E.Coli; David Wolfe and Tomi Lahren.
Knowing what shit looks like takes eliminating shit from your diet. What would your day look like if you fasted from your newsfeed? And what would your dinner time Facebook post look like if you knew that your followers were absolutely tired of the garbage you were feeding them?
How much power would these people really have if we stopped paying attention to them? If we realized we don’t need them?
There is a simple, one-click solution without the need for a mental gastric bypass:
Unfollow.
Let them eat cake.
As a chef responsible for the digital meals of my patrons, I hold myself responsible for what I serve. My High School English teacher taught me my first great lesson in quality assurance: Be your own best editor.
I hold that this quality assurance extends beyond grammar and into emotion. Information affects the mind, the gut, and the spirit of your digital followers.
Read what you want to share before you share it. Read it aloud. Taste it. Take a whiff. Take a picture of it and send it to your sister. Ask, “Am I acting from my best self?”
No? Then please save me from having to write a scathing Yelp review highlighting your cheapness, and blinding ignorance to the health of your customers.
My friends, please make sure to eat your own cooking.
with gratitude,
Timo