Telos Journal Edition Three October 2013 | Page 8

enjoyable are they or could they realistically be? Will they make eating unpleasantly necessary, automatic, perfunctory? Transforming your body should be an existential enterprise, that is, transformation should take place with each food experience wherein your sensations encounter the food—ideally in the growing process—and gather associative appeal until it’s ingested. Home-cooked meals trump eating out; personal herb gardens override bought spices; local fruit beats trucked produce; etc. Finding a diet that can adapt to each dieter’s lifestyle and genetic heritage is unlikely unless it can mobilize instead of relieve, unless it enhances nutritional self-possession rather than causes stiff reliance. You do not possess a ‘will power deficit’ when your focus is brought to the clarity of decision-making in the now. As independent individuals, we would do well to cut our dietary umbilical cords and rely instead on our own faculties of intuition, rational judgment, and self-respect when it comes to food choice. Our dietary discretion will thus become our own right to a confident guide to suitable nourishment.