Free Food: A Love Story by Jim Gaffigan

that I go to McDonald’s. I don’t want to go, it’s just that I have to or it’s possible I could starve to death.” Then all your food choices quickly become an endless stream of irrational rationalizations. “Well, I’ll allow myself to eat that because I had a salad a month ago. Well, I’ve earned that because I took out the garbage. Well, I’m starting my starvation diet tomorrow, so I really should have five hamburgers.”
    My favorite rationalization is when the food is free. I have never been able to turn down free food. Maybe it’s because I grew up with five siblings, and food was always a valuable commodity. Maybe the inability to resist free food has its roots in my college years, when I couldn’t afford food and at one point resorted to eating a can of pie filling. Whatever the reason, I just can’t resist it if it’s free. Free food is the temptress that can make me give up my morals and cheat on any diet. My diets always end in divorce.
    I’m married to a beautiful woman. I’m not just saying that because Jeannie is helping me write this book and she is sitting right next to me. Well, not right next to me, but chances are she will probably see this page at some point. But anyway, she is beautiful. When we are in public together and strangers find out Jeannie is my wife, there is usually an audible Wow! I used to find this flattering until I realized it was an insult. I’m not a caveman. Anyway, there are so many impressive things about Jeannie besides her beauty and brains. Most noticeable would be that Jeannie has given birth to five healthy babies, and I look like I ate five healthy babies. She is a genetic anomaly. It seems she can eat whatever she wants to and still remain thin and energetic.Jeannie aspires to make everyone in our family healthy eaters, but it’s kind of hard with me around.
    Jeannie has gone from wanting us to eat healthy, to wanting us to eat organic, to not buying food. She buys this bread that is made from 100 percent organic tree bark. “Why do you need regular bread when you can lick a tree?” Jeannie likes to buy organic whole foods. Organic is probably the biggest scam of the century. For those of you unfamiliar with it, organic is a grocery term for “more expensive.”
    There are people who eat only organic food, and then there are people who don’t have tons of money to waste. You can pretty much find anything made organically these days, including healthy versions of unhealthy food. French fries have been replaced by sweet potato fries, which are the Gardenburger of fries and taste exactly like something terrible. We all know hot dogs are bad for us, so that’s why there is the tofu dog. I’m pretty sure the guy who invented the tofu dog never actually ate a real hot dog. If he had, he never would have invented the tofu dog. Or maybe he tasted a real hot dog after he invented the tofu dog and was then filled with remorse. The tofu dog became his Frankenstein’s monster. “Why? Why did I create the tofu dog? We must stop the tofu dog!”
    There are even organic candies, cookies, and chips that fall into another category known as “Whole Junk Food.” These foods fit into my rationalization pattern very nicely: “These potato chips are cooked with avocado oil, so I can eat ten bags. It’s good for me.” Usually the only discernible difference between a regular potato chip and a “healthy chip” is the difficulty in opening the bag. Supposedly there are good fats and bad fats. I like to think of myself as a good fat. It helps my self-esteem when I look in the mirror.
    Jeannie loves buying vegetables at the farmers’ market. Can we just settle down with the farmers’ market enthusiasm?Instead of going to a grocery store and getting everything I need, I can stand outside and buy some dirty vegetables on the street from absolute strangers who supposedly live on a farm but are probably serial killers. How do we know that some of the people selling stuff