We are a society obsessed with food. “What not to eat, what to eat, and how much?” are questions which answers define us both individually and collectively. If we look back into art history, we see a very different vision of beauty. Images of rotund men and women, in finery or nude, meet our gaze in the artworks of antiquity. The well-off were well-fed and flaunted their hard earned flesh in painting and sculpture. Compare them to the models that grace the covers of today’s magazines who must sweat, starve, and photoshop their way to glamour.

In today’s world of abundance, consider what you might infer about these imaginary people just by a description of their diets:

A vegan that refuses to eat any product derived from an animal.
A man that goes to Burger King everyday for lunch.
A woman that eats nothing at all if she can help it, only a few drinks when out on the town.

Many reading this have already formed a mental picture of what these people might look like and how they might act. Just from a single sentence describing what they choose to eat.

There is also a darker side to food. Even with the world’s population at 7 billion and counting, there is still more then enough food to go around, yet some people starve. Food can be a great means by which one person or group can leverage control over another. It’s no coincidence that when despots come to power, one of their first actions is usually to seize control of the food supply.