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Dine Out or Dine In
By Gene Sager
My circle of friends often invites me
to join them for lunch at a restaurant or brewery. The more the invitations,
the more I have pondered this trend. Eating out is fun, easy, and tasty. But
we need to heed the wisdom of the old adage about the stone tossed into the
pond: The ripples go out to every shore.
Dining Out
My friends’ favorite restaurant is a
funky place bearing the unlikely name “Chez Smitty’s.” Smitty’s features a
$5.00 lunch special called the Stamina Lunch. Recently, the Stamina meal was
spaghetti, buttery garlic bread, and salad. Smitty himself was willing to
answer my questions about the food. He remained implacable as he described
what was very disturbing to me. The pasta is not whole grain and not
organic. The salty tomato sauce and salad are not organic. The bread is not
whole grain (no surprise), but most troubling was Smitty’s foggy response
about the “buttery” spread. It is not butter; it’s a spread that tastes like
butter. Smitty said, “I looked at the ingredients list, some oils and other
things I couldn’t understand. Anyway, it tastes good.”
Chez Smitty’s is an unappointed spot
with an unusual name but the fare is the usual. The usual American fast or
slow food restaurant fare: not organic, not whole grain, not local, with
indiscriminate use of oils, salt and sugar, and some mystery ingredients
unknown to the owners and managers. Most of us are not used to raising
questions about ingredients at a restaurant. But why not? If we are
committed to eating a healthful, green diet, then we should be clear: Most
restaurant food is unhealthful and ungreen. The ripple effect goes to the
detriment of our health and the health of the planet and all who live on the
planet. And we should also consider the health of the farm workers;
non-organic food production yields direct toxin exposure to the workers.
What about purchasing restaurant food
and eating it at home? Picking up dinner on the way home or having it
delivered is the preferred combination for many, but take-out food is a
double detriment for the earth. Besides the problems caused by non-organic
products, pick up or delivery means Styrofoam, paper, and plastics – many of
which are not recyclable in most places. Much of the paper is chemically
treated to resist moisture, and boxes get too greasy to recycle. In areas
without curbside compost pick-up, greasy pizza boxes, especially, wind up in
the landfill with most of the rest of the carry-out or delivery materials.
Beyond the landfill, the ripple effect even goes out as far as the garbage
gyres in the oceans. Surely the vast pools of trash, mostly plastics, in our
oceans are sad commentary on our species and cause of great shame.
Dining at Home
Now, consider a dinner prepared and
eaten at home. The flipside of the effort involved in this is that you
control important matters, like the ingredients of the meal! These, and
myriad details that matter, such as the temperature, the noise level, and
the music or lack of it. The manager of the restaurant may like Kenny G, but
my family does not.
Dinner at home can be a time to relax
with family and share what may be pressing on our minds and hearts. Home is
a place where we can create a sanctuary, but a restaurant is a public place,
in that strangers are sitting at tables nearby and public protocols apply.
At a restaurant, personal matters or prayer or meditation before the meal
would not feel right.
I have heard it said that going out to
eat as a family frees us from the chores of preparation and cleanup and
gives us a chance to bond. Actually, the reverse is true; dining out puts us
in an artificial, public environment and deprives us of the elbow-to-elbow
preparation and clean up experiences that bring us together. I make the
salad while my son makes the guacamole. My daughter is putting the finishing
touches on the dessert and my wife is making the spaghetti sauce. Everyone
helps clean up too, and in this way we have really shared a meal.
When we do it right, dining in can be
healthful and green, and it supports family togetherness in ways that are
impossible when we dine out.
Gene Sager is Professor of Environmental Ethics at
Palomar College in San Marcos, California. He is a prolific and thoughtful
writer on environmental and philosophical issues, and a frequent contributor
to Natural Life.
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