Fuel as Food for Thought
A bunch of motor enthusiasts gather at a car rally, sleeves rolled, egos revving. They swap tales of rebored engines, piston honing, and chrome-plated existential upgrades. These stories bear witness to the proud metamorphosis of a ‘standard’ vehicle into something grander—something eye-catching, fire-breathing, and vaguely divine. A chariot of combustion. A myth on wheels.
Now, if we were to equate a person to a vehicle (and why not, it’s cheaper than therapy), then food would equate to… yes, you probably got it. Fuel. Gasoline. Petroleum. The go-juice. The edible accelerant. And yet, our rally-goers aren’t waxing poetic about fuel. No, and why would they? Fuel is just fuel. It’s not part of the mythic equation. It’s the backstage crew, not the lead actor. Necessary, yes—but gloriously unremarkable.
So back to this fuel called food. Sure, there are more options now—chia smoothies, kale confetti, and ethically sourced unicorn jerky. But simple choices remain sufficiently sufficient. Excess still bloats, moderation usually rewards, and even moderation should be used in moderation. (Because sometimes, a reckless flirtation with tiramisu is the only way to feel alive.)
Alternatively, you could count joules. You could pioneer a strain of lima beans optimized for left-handed redheads with mild seasonal depression. You might monitor the metabolic rates of identical twins raised such that when one eats an orange, the other eats an apple—just to prove that apples should be orange and oranges should come with a zipper.
With sufficient funding, you might draft a meticulous set of rules concerning the sacred order of food consumption. Imagine a Twitter feed called #EatDessertFirst, followed by a cult, followed by a schism, followed by a Netflix docuseries. Suddenly, you’re authoring a holy scripture full of dietary commandments. Thou shalt not microwave fish in the office. Thou shalt not trust a salad with raisins. And to what end? Simply to reinforce the notion that food is the stuff of myth.
But I digress.
No thanks. I’ll just fuel up—toast, beans, maybe a rogue fig—and get on with playing at living a life that, every so often, backfires into something mythic.
Editor’s Note: While this post satirizes our mythic obsession with meals and the rituals we wrap around food, it’s worth remembering that for many, “fuel” isn’t metaphor—it’s survival. The luxury of dietary philosophy pales beside the urgency of hunger. As we riff on snackrifice and carburetor buffets, let’s not forget the real work: fueling the poor with dignity, access, and empathy. Every plate should be a promise, not a privilege.
Harry is a recovering satirist, part-time philosopher, and metadata tinkerer. His archive spans two decades of metaphysical mischief, theological punchlines, and poetic nonsense. He believes in satire’s transformative power, the elegance of expressive metadata, and recursion—once writing a poem that never ended and a script that crashed browsers.
