Bob's Naked Salad and a Heartfelt Plea

'Tis the season for radical neutrality about other people's food

Do you ever wonder why some memories of fleeting and inconsequential moments have a half-life of 7,000 years, while your recall of how you spent Friday afternoon is already lost to time?

Since the 1980s, I have carried around the memory of a single sentence spoken by a friend on the topic of salads. He was naturally slim and healthy, a kind and easygoing guy with a dry sense of humor. As far as I could see he was devoid of eccentricities unless you counted the fact that he didn't put dressing on his salads. And I definitely counted that.

"I've never understood," said Bob, "why you'd bother to get all these nice, healthy vegetables together and then cover them in oil."

That's it. That's the end of the memory. For 40 years, Bob's articulation of his salad philosophy has stuck with me like Hamlet's soliloquy. I occasionally take that sentence out for inspection, like you might do with your grandpa's old pocket watch, then tuck it back in a box for safekeeping.

Bob's declaration probably sticks because up to that point, I'd only ever considered salad to be a vehicle for dressing. But also, there was the food judgment — his and mine. Bob had been observing and judging those of us who ruined our salads with fat, and I was judging right back. Naked salad? Never! What puritanical nonsense!

Well, I have since eaten naked salad. Not often. Not more than a few times, probably, but in cases where the main course was all zhuzhed up with sauce, or a waiter forgot to bring dressing, I have munched my way through raw greens and not died. I almost enjoyed them. Now I understand Bob a little better and have dropped all judgment about his food choices. (He must be so relieved.)

I suppose I should point out that while I have eaten naked salad, I have not eaten salad naked. It seems unlikely I ever will, but 62 years on the planet has slowed my inclination to predict never and always. One just cannot be so sure.

And yet I feel pretty darned certain during this holiday season that our rich shared culture of judging and handwringing and commenting on what other people do and do not eat continues to thrive.

So I need to pipe up in a little pipsqueak voice to say, Please. Can we not?

I ask this in part because I am That Friend with the Weird Diet. You probably have lots of those by now, and for crying out loud, no two of us are on the same page! You've got your vegetarian friends and the vegans, the pescatarians, the dairy-averse, the gluten-averse. You have that one friend (no names please) who hates cheese and the one who is allergic to nuts, who is different from the one who cannot eat shellfish. You have your sainted omnivores and the carnivores, and the carnivores who hold the line at veal or lamb or pork, or combinations thereof.

God help you if you're trying to cook for this crowd. Might as well just serve Bob's Naked Salad and an EpiPen and call it a party.

Such particularities are exhausting. As someone who won't eat anything with added sugar or sweetener of any kind, or anything made with any kind of flour, I get it. I have learned to clear my throat before answering whether I have any special dietary needs.

And I get it as someone who occasionally tries to cook for friends and remembers the time years ago that I tainted an otherwise vegan dinner with store-bought salad dressing that contained honey. Vegans don't eat honey. A current of judgment zipped through me when I learned that.

But if the spirit of the season is good will toward all, one easy place to begin is to quit being so invested in other people's plates, palates and proclivities.

We live in a culture that has utterly lost its compass when it comes to food. For a half-century, we've been bombarded by ultra-processed food, wildly conflicting nutritional advice from the worlds of science and government, marketing messages that urge more-more-more, and snake-oil salesmen selling the diet du jour. Virtually all of us have been touched by this in some way — physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually.

Within that crazy environment, each of us does the best we can.

So regardless of whether the person next to me puts too much on his plate or too little by my lights, it is none of my beeswax. Whether she eats keto or an all Kraft mac-and-cheese regimen is above my pay grade and beneath my concern.  

At minimum, bringing nonjudgment to others' food means keeping our opinions to ourselves. In our family, the women laugh bitterly when my naturally slender husband observes, "Wow, you were hungry!" after watching one of us devour a meal quickly and thoroughly. Hahaha, but really. Stop saying schmidt¹ like that.  

Likewise, let's normalize smiling and nodding when someone declines our offer of a snack or hors d'oeuvres or a second helping of dessert. The first "no thank you" should be the end of the conversation. We are not Old-World grandmothers in charge of fattening up our families before the big freeze. And I say this as someone who insisted that my kids take home leftovers as recently as Thanksgiving. Like it was their job to help me keep my kitchen safe from temptation.

These traditions are deeply rooted and mostly affectionately meant. Maybe we worked hard on that dessert and enjoy seeing loved ones unable to resist taking just a little more. Maybe we worry that they're looking too thin. Or that they seem sad, and that another slice of our famous German chocolate cake might make things better for the moment.

But the people we press food upon might be working harder than we know to eat moderately at a time of year when moderation gets cast aside like an orphan sock. It's a kindness to step back and let no be no.

Similarly, no one needs eye-rolls or jokes about the kind of food we do or do not eat. Polite curiosity? Maybe. When I learned that honey was not part of a vegan diet, I genuinely wanted insight, and my friend enlightened me. (In simple terms, some regard the harvesting of honey to be exploitative; more nuance is available here.) Today, neither my vegan friends nor I eat honey, albeit for different reasons. I cheerfully answer inquiries as to why I don't, but it's also just OK to let it all be. She don't eat honey 'cause she don't eat honey.

During the same decades that the American way of eating was going bananas, our out-of-control way of drinking became better in some ways. Credit the awareness-building of fellowship groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, and high-profile addicts speaking out about their struggles. Credit survivors of alcohol-related tragedies. It's been a long time since I've gotten so much as a sidelong glance when I decline a cocktail. When it comes to alcohol, waiters and party hosts alike better understand that their job is to offer rather than to sell.

That model transfers perfectly to food. Which isn't to say changing the way we do things comes naturally.

If one has always been Mrs. Claus saying, "EAT, Papa, EAT!"² it feels weird to switch course. The weird is good, though. The stranger it feels to stop pushing food or commenting on others' plates, or repeatedly asking if they've had enough, the better we understand how deeply ingrained that habit is. And once we see that, we can never unsee it.

Holidays are wonderful but navigating the holiday bounty can be stressful. Adopting radical neutrality about other people's choices is hardly stressful at all. It won't bring peace on Earth, but it surely is an act of good will.

Bon appetit.

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1. Clever profanity replacement effort.

2. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" 1964 animated classic film quote.