Sigh…Decisions, decisions. I’m starting a support group for people with CID. Chronic Indecisiveness Disorder. I totally have it, along with Orthorexia, of course. I agonize over decisions every day. Like should I eat my breakfast quinoa with an egg, nori and turmeric, or with ricotta, pumpkin seeds and aleppo chili? Or should I wear light or medium-weight wool running socks? Such problems… I wonder if my poor dead grandma, who risked everything to save her family as they fled Nazi-occupied Europe thought, “I’m doing this so that someday my granddaughter can stand in a Whole Foods and suffer a momentary breakdown over which species of fish she should buy”?
But I’m a chef, and I talk and write about food for a living so I know a lot. Maybe too much. I have an edge, and also a handicap. I see through the bullsh*t, the marketing, the greenwashing that the food business tries to trick us with, especially the Foodiness business. But I’m also a victim of over-information, I get stuck. I feel bi-polar sometimes. I want to be free and easy and say to myself, “yeah, it’s cool, just eat real food and nothing processed and you’ll be fine” and saying, “there is almost nothing safe enough or sustainably raised enough or nutritious enough, and what am I going to eat?” That’s my personal version of American food bi-polar-ness.
I guess it’s better than the one that is exploding at the chain restaurants these days, as they try to respond to criticism about their products, and market research that says Americans want “healthier” foods on the menu. (But they really don’t) Like Dunkin Donuts introducing ice cream flavored iced coffee and marshmallow peeps donuts, the same week they start selling brewed, iced green tea. Hmm, which do we think will sell? That’s what I call bi-polar America. We want it, we don’t want it! Like a bunch of three-year olds, throwing a tantrum because we can, and we’re three. And we want the pink donut with the yellow peep on top!
So in this episode, “I can’t make up my mind because I’m having an ice-cream-flavored-iced-coffee headache” I get real about all this, and so much more.