No good deed goes unfed

Why do we reward good behaviour with food?  And crap food at that. "Hey good job.  Here's some donuts and cake."  (We all know that donuts and cake are crap food, right?)

When I experience this at work I often graciously turn down the food and say “thanks I appreciate the sentiment.”  But I get looks like “well isn’t he a snob, and ungrateful.”  I often feel brow beaten into eating crap I don’t want, because folks just keep pestering you.

I work in a cubicle farm where everyone sits all day, so you can imagine almost everyone is very overweight or carefully watching their weight.  To reward these people with more crap food is making the problem worse.

I just don’t get it.  It’s like dropping a brick on someone’s toe that is already broken.  Why would you do that?

I also see folks give crap food to others in an effort to cheer up a friend.  “Sorry your boyfriend dumped you; let’s gorge ourselves on ice-cream.”  Huh, how does eating ice cream help the situation?

Is it our North American society that only does this?  Why is there such an emotional attachment to food?  It's just food for heaven's sake.  Sure it tastes good, but it’s not love or compassion or <insert emotion here> that you are craving.

I guess I just don’t seem to have the emotional attachment to food that some others seem to be a slave to.  Now don’t get me wrong; I enjoy eating some foods more than others as some food just taste better.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an ice cream addict; but I won’t touch brussell sprouts (they are just plain evil).  But after the 5 luxurious minutes of the wonderful taste, you think “oh, I should have eaten all that” and feel guilty the rest of the day.  It doesn’t seem worth it.

And where and when does this emotional attachment to food start?  I see my mother in law, who takes care of our kids during the working day, as she says she wants to treat the kids so I often come home to numerous chip bags, cookies, fast food wrappers, etc all scattered throughout the house.  I think “you want to spoil the kids so you feed them crap that is no good for them?”  That makes no sense.  So maybe we teach this to the next generation at an early age and they just perpetuate the behaviour forward to their kids.

I also recall on older commercial when some kid broke something or got hurt and the parent quickly whipped up some easy to serve milkshake concoction that was crap and gave it to the kid.  The kid then smiles and forgets his woes.  “Ooh, don’t cry, here’s some crap food to make you feel better.”

We celebrate milestones by eating food too.  “Congrats on your graduation or anniversary.  Let’s eat.”  In fact we often celebrate making it to Friday with Pizza or some other food.

It’s no wonder we have such an obese society.  For every occasion we eat.  We even makeup occasions to eat.  “Let’s have a potluck lunch just because we haven’t had one in a while.”

So how do we break this crazy ingrained behaviour? 

How about rewards using non-food items.  Make someone a homemade card saying thanks or congrats.  Something from the heart.  We all love that sort of thing, don’t we?  How about a treat of a gift card to a bookstore or non food related store, movie tickets or just a face to face “Hey, you did a great job, I really appreciate it, thanks.”  I like this best of all, but our society is quickly turning away from this type of activity.  “Can’t I just email or text something instead or just leave a voice mail message?”  Now there’s a real personal touch.

Or how about instead of rewarding someone with crap food, perhaps dish out something else which not good for you.  “Good job Joe, now here’s a poke in the eye.”