This column will explore how food can make or break your day as a college student dealing with God-knows-what and some insight on where to dine to decrease your chances of breaking it. What is your favorite thing to eat? Is it the special chicken noodle soup only your mom can make? Or those dumplings from that restaurant you can’t remember the name of? Is food something you think about a lot or do you hardly think about it at all? Thinking about how our lives revolve around it, I couldn’t help but wonder – when did eating stop being just about hunger? Anthony Bourdain said: “Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me.” Los Angeles is a melting pot of cultures, cuisines and personalities that all get together to coexist every single day. In this city, you experience life and love in ways that you never may have had access to in your small town in Oklahoma (no offense). Growing up in Los Angeles county with a parent who didn’t really cook (sorry mother) and one who couldn’t whip up a meal long distance (no comment on my father), not knowing much about the food scene in general, I truly felt nothing about food, nothing good or bad. Still, I feared trying anything new. But ladies and gentlemen, that is not the life you want to live! Food is a universal language, but you have to pay attention to it in order to understand its translations. And it is important to let go of the “food is fuel” mentality. Because if you’re going to experience something every single day for the rest of your life, you might as well enjoy it for as long as you can. In order to fall for Los Angeles’ food and beverage scene, it requires letting go of some social norms. Weirdly, we still fall into these judgments regardless of what year it is. Gendered meals and drinks, God forbid a woman drinks a beer without being called a “pick-me” or a man orders a cosmopolitan without facing the wrath of his peers. And what is with some men hating brunch? Those poor people haven’t LIVED till they’ve experienced a bottomless mimosa drag brunch. Getting to know your college town (especially when it’s a magnificent one like the city of Los Angeles), is absolutely necessary in my opinion. I know it’s easy to fall into a routine making the same dinners and ordering the same takeout, but if the furthest you got after all four years was the Hill, I hope that is solely because you found an unlimited meal-swipe hack. Food can also be threatening too, which I get. I’m sure a lot of us have shed tears after realizing that “protein bar” had 64 grams of sugar. Sometimes it feels like the only form of control we really have, which can lead to over-control and that can be scary in its own way. “A lot of us can feel anxious around food, but if we learn to love it and treat it like a gift, maybe things can change for the better,” said your favorite cult leader (me!). No but really, if I wasn’t Jewish already, praying to fruits and vegetables doesn’t seem that far out . . . at least it’s tangible. With the memories you already have and all of the ones to come, I hope to change a few of your perspectives on food if you don’t care about it much or enhance the feelings you already maintain. I want to show you all of the places that made me fall head over heels in love with food, and I’m hoping you catch feelings too.
