Eat with Joy, by Rachel Marie Stone

Conversations about food are moving in a startling number of directions. But no matter the disparate destinations, most emerge from the center point of dogma. From the calorie-counting nutritionism of church-based weight-loss groups, to the kale-chip raw foodism of vegans and foragers, to the fight-world-hunger leftoverism of thrifty Mennonites, sermonizing about food has become a cultural commonplace.

We know our sins so well: the obesity and diabetes epidemics, the wasteland of industrial food production, the pesticidal scrim on even locally picked strawberries, and the nutrition-coded inequalities that separate economic classes. Frankly, we’re ready for some fire and brimstone. We know that our globalized, industrialized, Monsanto-ized, commercialized, supersized food culture needs to be punished, purged and perhaps destroyed; nothing short of apocalyptic solutions will do.

Thus when Rachel Marie Stone offers homilies of food redemption rather than damnation, it may feel like a lovely if disorienting kind of grace. When we expect demands for penance, absolution can be disconcerting. Affirmation of the essential goodness of food and appetite, and the suggestion that it might be sacramental to eat Chinese food off of “planet-destroying Styrofoam in the church basement”—it’s enough to make people reread the book to make sure they haven’t missed out on the self-flagellation.