Once
upon a time, there were various people around the world who each ate different
things. Some thought that their chosen
food was the right thing to be eating and all should eat the same as they did,
others didn’t mind, as long as they got to eat what they wanted.
There
were those who ate Potatoes, those who ate Cake, those who ate Pizza and so on.
Some
of the people who ate Pizza were taken from their homes and forced to eat
Cake. They found that they
could play with the way Cake was made and add Pizza elements to it. After a while, they created Savoury Muffins,
which combined both Cake and Pizza but wasn’t really either.
Another
group of Cake eaters remembered a time when they ate Bread and went back to
Bread. There were many varieties of
Bread, with a lot of different flavours and components. One group liked to have a hard crust on their
Bread, others liked Brown Bread with seeds and nuts in it. Some liked Cake and
Bread but were told they couldn’t have both so they created Scones. Others discovered they liked Potatoes with
their Bread and created Potato Bread.
Yet another group found Pizza, they found it too much to have on it’s
own, but the toppings worked for them on Bread, so they created Pizza Bread.
Many
of these groups didn’t understand how the others could possibly like what they
did. “It must be either Bread or Cake”
they said, “It doesn’t work to combine the two.”
“You’re
not eating your Potatoes the right way,” they said, “You have to eat them our
way or not at all.”
And
when it came to Pizza Bread, “Your tomatoes, onions and garlic aren’t real
tomatoes, onions or garlic,” they said, “You have to learn the secrets of
making and eating Savoury Muffins before you can truly know if you really have
tomatoes or peppers pretending to be tomatoes.”
On
the whole, each group was getting all the nutrition they needed, they grew and
were healthy. But some diets caused
their eaters to grow outwards instead of upwards and the eaters became bloated
and sick. Some found that their foods
made them ill and they had to go and find a different food in order to become
well and healthy again. Sometimes what a
person needed was a combination of foods because they lacked something that was
only eaten by another group.
The
problems came when most groups became jealous of their food. They didn’t like it when someone used
something they thought of as theirs to create another type of food. It was as though by eating it differently it
threatened their own food choices or made them invalid.
Wars
raged about who had the right to eat each food.
They argued and battled about who had risen in the ranks of making food
to be able to say how it was done correctly and just what was the correct way
to cook up your ingredients and make the perfect food.
There
was enough of each ingredient to go around.
No group was ever at risk of running out of ingredients to make their
food and be able to eat it. If there had been a chance of not enough tomatoes
being available to make either Pizza, Pizza Bread or Savoury Muffins then
perhaps the wars, the nastiness and bad feelings between these people could
have been understandable. But there was
never that risk. There were always
plenty of tomatoes to go around and satisfy everyone.
Many
wise people tried to understand why these wars went on. Most of them failed. Many tried to mediate between the groups,
pointing out the similarities instead of the differences. Not enough people cared and they also failed.
It
is my hope that one day, we can all eat whatever we want without being told
that we can’t have this with that, or we’re holding our forks the wrong way.
