We yell over tables, chewing food with our mouths open, telling our kids that if they don't eat what is before them, there will be no reward—no tastier food, like an ice cream cone, after. If you don’t ingest that energy now, there will be no further energy dots in your day. it's a very Pac-Man way to understand it (but Pac Man doesn't go to the bathroom). And if you have to go to the bathroom, please declare that information before we start driving back home. Eating and excreting are fundamental to our existence, but if you keep making me pull over at every gas station, there will be hell to pay. When I see people ordering some food metric, like perogies, steak, or cavier, I often think of the similar, long brown-ish muck it ends up as. The insane cravings we have for edible things within our consumption repertoire versus the waste that goes out of our bodily exhaust pipes.
You aren't what you eat - you are what you don't poop.—Wavy Gravy
The next time you see an ad on TV for FOOD, think about the inevitable toilet research that will go on, vacating that food from your system when its energy content is minimal. Isn’t it amusing how we happily gather in droves to indulge in culinary delights—burgers, burritos, subs, and sandwiches—at food fairs, first dates, or five-star, seven-course meals, yet scurry off to tiny, cramped, often dirty bathroom stalls for the not-so-glamorous act of excreting? Often with little or no warning! We feast in public, savoring every bite, only to retreat to a solitary throne to dispose of the very energy that fuels our joy.
Is there a future where we don't get any privacy inside of a little stall? Is there some Kardashev Type III Civilization where they don't shit?
It’s a cheeky little cycle: we consume, we convert, and then we flush away the evidence of our indulgence. Both ends of our alimentary canal testify to our odd eating and bathroom behaviors. It begs the question: If our tables are so clean and ready for us to consume energy dots, why do restaurants not seem to care about making the bathroom experience just as inviting? Imagine your last bathroom experience at a gas station!
Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant.—Guy Kawasaki
Historically, the Romans had it figured out with their communal toilets, where folks chatted away side by side, embracing the natural process of life with laughter and camaraderie. And for 1700 years onwards, we would walk around pretending we weren't offended by the smells that stood fast into every nook and cranny. And if you thought you'd go out to the pasture for some fresh air, think again. I was in a little village in Mongolia, only accessible by horseback. In the center of some two hundred gers (large circular tents), was an acre of cow dung three feet tall. This was fuel to get everyone through the long winter. So everyone collected it. Recycling in Mongolia means you pick up after your pet, even if that pet is a hundred head of cattle.
Fast forward to today, and we’ve created a bizarre world where eating is a social affair, while doing our business is treated like a state secret. Why the secrecy? Eating brings us together, while excretion sends us running for the nearest stall, as if we’re committing a crime. And then there’s the royal aspect: imagine the embarrassment of showing the Queen eating, a surprisingly animalistic act for someone so revered. The very thought of royalty engaging in such a mundane task feels jarring, as if it could shatter the veneer of their dignity. It is, in fact, illegal to take a picture of royalty eating. Imagine that! Like The Guardian wouldn't pay you £10,000 for King Charles eating ribs like a proletariat, spattered with sauce. Conversely, the fine for such a picture is £10,000.
...if God was a city planner he would not put a playground next to a sewage system.—Darald
It’s funny to think that the very food we relish—the energy dots we so enjoy, that we re-heat in the staff kitchen's universal microwave oven, that we pray about when it means meeting her parents for the first time, that we cram into three areas for eating per day, that we don't deny POWs, that we see where countries without it grow weak and starve, that we yell our order across a sea of people in a crowded deli, that we order through a box of static at the drive-thru at 2am, that we yell at our mom's to make us, that a nation without it is called a famine, that people say grace over, that they serve in vanishing amounts on airlines, all of it packed with flavor and calories—ultimately ends up in the toilet in a bowel movement not unlike any other human being. The sterile, cramped design of modern bathrooms doesn’t help either. But I was at a truckstop on the I-80 and boy, I saw what the bathrooms are like in Heaven...
We eat, we energize, and yes, we eventually shit it out. It’s all part of the delightful human experience.
