RACHEL'S COLUMNS

These articles appeared in Rachel's column every Friday in the A3 section of The Age

Food erotica a weapon of mass seduction
6th August 2004

Human beings are prone to illusion.  I've only just finished my breakfast – a teensy bowl of branflakes, lecithin, wheatgerm and a slurp of skinny milk and I know I'm in denial because IT'S NOT ENOUGH!  My brain is working tirelessly to observe the facts.  There's even steam coming out of my ears as I try to apply reason and logic to having just consumed this bowl of roughage.  I know in my waters that it's good for me but every part of my body wants more.  I want the croissant dripping with butter, waffles soggy with honey and milky coffee, steamy and hot with heaps of sugar.  Why?  Because I'm gazing at a photo in a slimming magazine that warns me that this sort of breakfast can kill me.

But actually, what I'm realising is that my pleasure in looking at this forbidden image is reminiscent of another form of guilty but indulgent observation – sexual pornography – let's face it – we're bombarded on all fronts with food erotica.  Glossy photos in dieting magazines show us a smorgasbord of forbidden desires that will make us fat.  Behold the deviates of the dieting world – bags of potato chips, peanuts, chocolate bars, and cream puddings – all wicked delights.

Diet foods on the other hand are advertised as sensually as possible with explicit sexual references – one add I saw read, "for girls who used to say 'no'-to grapefruit."  I don't have the statistics but apparently more women go to bed with a recipe book or a pack of glossy cooking cards than any other reading material.  It's incredible, but every night some woman out there will fall asleep with her face slap bang on top of a full colour, high gloss picture of a roasted breast of duck lying invitingly on a bed of baked potatoes or a perfectly formed chocolate mouse wrapped in thick cream.

I understand how this can happen, it's as if in a world of no sugar, no salt and no fat, our desires are aroused through the unavailability of these naughty foods.  It's true, food reminds me of sex, sex reminds me of soup and soup reminds me of soggy kisses and love, sort of – in an elderly aunt-who-smells-of-chicken fat and garlic-kind of way!  But it's not just any food that entices – it's never chopped liver or tripe – but mainly sweet things, ripe fruits, cakes, puddings and puffy pastries.

I've noticed that over the last couple of years, it's fashionable again to use foodie terms of endearment.  The impact of American culture has re-introduced these words into our language and turned our private conversations into a trip to the lolly shop; sweetie, honey, lollipop, honeybunch.  I've always found expressions like "the apple of my eye" and "you're the cream in my coffee" a bit sinister.  They evoke a sense of ownership and a desire to please and no one likes to feel as if they're being manipulated.

Sure, we have sexual appetites – we hunger for love, we eat our hearts out and we feast our eyes on plenty of eye candy.  But at this time of the year when glossy magazines begin bombarding us with the latest swimsuits, suitable diets and headlines such as, "This summer we want you to look tall, long-legged and vigorous" – I just want to throw up!

My favorite most ridiculous, "guaranteed" weight-loss product, is any substance that’s supposed to fill you up so you don't feel hungry – like fibre tablets.  They used to be available at the health food shop.  The instructions were that you swallow one with a glass of water and they expand to five times their size, thereby filling you up.  I always imagined that what actually happened was that you expanded so much that your breast or a leg would explode off your body and that's how you lost weight!

We see heaps of advertising for "delicious but deadly foods" – why not the same warning for deadly but deliciously sounding catchphrases, like weapons of mass destruction or bringing democracy to the world.  I guess these words contain absolutely no cholesterol, fat or sugars so they're a perfect quick-fix solution in our illusional world