Forget food porn, let’s talk about food love!

As many people around me know, I am a food lover. I enjoy thinking about what I am going to eat next, I love supermarkets, I like discovering new restaurants around Milan and I do all these things on a daily basis, not just like when I am sad or when there’s a special occasion.

When I was a child I used to say that I was different from other children because I ate whatever they gave me and I didn’t have problems with vegetables or fruits. The only things I didn’t eat back then (and still I don’t like them) were coffee, olives and pineapple. Still I’d eat la coppa del nonno and bread with olives.

Now I don’t want to talk about my habits too much (who cares?), what I want to do is to drive your attention to something that I’ve thought in the latest days. In Italy there’s a lot going on in the food market, we have slow food, Eataly and of course our lovely traditions which differ from region to region (or even from city to city). While traveling I had a chance to taste also different cuisines (and of course Milan offers many opportunities to eat ethnic food) and what I think distinguishes the best foods in the world is the love behind them. Mothers trying to make tasty stuff for their families when products available are scarce, passionate chefs trying to surprise their clients, people doing acts of love to themselves choosing carefully what they are going to eat.

The image you often get of food is however a little bit different from this. Food porn is everywhere and somehow there’s this big connection between food and sex and sensuality. Mind I am not against this stuff, of course there’s some sex behind all this as there’s some sex in every relationship (hopefully). Yet reducing food into just a sexual act is abuse and might be the reason why some people develop strange relationships with food. I am no psychologist, but to me food addiction looks like sex addiction and the fear of food typical of anorexia reminds me of those who don’t practice sex for weird reasons.

We always think about putting love in the making, but we often forget putting love in the consuming act.

Of course given my food consumption (which is various, but not huge) I have some fear that food will dominate me somehow. Yet what I thought lately is that this is simply not possible because I don’t only desire what I eat, I love it. To me, the only way to change the bad habits with food it’s important to develop healthy love relationship with it. In the Western world we have access to kinds of food and we have the incredible luck to choose. What I think we are required to do is to take this chance to choose and select our food with love, respecting its tradition, its ingredients and, of course, sharing it with the people around us.

In this article you some pictures of the food my boyfriend prepared (with love) for us!