Super Size Craving

Today's Menu: Blueberry Muffin
It's Wednesday, forget the drama...

I admit it: We watch the Academy Awards at our house. We buy snacks, kick back, and enjoy the show. I'm shallow enough to say I love to see the gowns. Yes, I'd wear that. No, I wouldn't want to be buried in that. If I looked like her, I'd definitely wear that. What would I say if I ever won for Best Screenplay? (hey, a writer can dream!)

For the first time, we'll be watching at the edge of our seats to see who wins in the Documentary category. We're cheering for the only one we watched. Super Size Me.

Yup, the one where the guy documents his 30-day saga of eating McDonald's three meals a day and he nearly pickles his liver by day 21, all while his vegan girlfriend looks on and shakes her head in horror. For you family-friendly readers, I'll tell you there's one f*** word (not fudge) spoken by an interviewee, and an R-rated shot while the guy is getting an exam in a doctor's office. But I digress. Aside from that, don't cringe, rent the movie.

What made me shake my head in horror is seeing how our Western culture seems bent on destroying ourselves with the foods that bring us such pleasure. We poison our bodies with processed junk--and no, it doesn't just come from McDonald's. We don't have to super size or go through a drive-thru to satisfy our cravings with food that won't satisfy. Not an hour after we consume more calories in a meal than we need in one day, our bodies reap from the sugar and starch, then crash. The cravings start, and our mouths water for another fix.

But haven't we always been that way? Eve's daughter I am. I only have to look in the mirror to see what I've done to myself. I won't hate her for eating the forbidden fruit when I've had more than my share. Satisfy those cravings now, pay later in a bad way. My scale sighs.

Eve's nature is to destroy herself by taking that which she thinks will make her happy. Which reminds me, now that we're at the point of making confessions. It's late, and that makes me more lucid than normal. I watched Desperate Housewives the other night, mostly to see what the fuss is all about.

This episode dealt with sin and guilt, and how many of us choose to deal with those things. One of the characters had cheated on her husband and was staving off the guilt, when a priest entered her mother-in-law's hospital room. Of course, this same priest had heard the confession of the guy she'd had the fling with. Oops.

They had a bit of verbal grappling about her indiscretion without actually mentioning it.

She told the priest, "I just want to be happy."

And he told her, "That's the answer of a child."

So it is. What makes a child happy changes from moment to moment. "But, Pumpkin, you liked peas last week!"

"But I don't this week!"

Which brings me back around to Super Size Me. The oldest problem in the book, what to do about that craving. Maybe it's not that the craving is bad. We were created with taste buds, after all. Maybe it's learning to crave the right things and realize that what we crave isn't always the quick fix through the drive-thru. We don't know what we really want.

The first step to getting out of the mess is realizing, "I'm in one."

Tonight just sign me,
A Daughter of Eve who's found the way out and back to Eden