Hello and welcome. This is the podcast for the International Journal of feminist approaches to bioethics brought to you by fab Network. My name is Katherine McKay. And today I'm joined by making from Michigan State University to discuss her paper time to eat the importance of temporality for food ethics. Hi, Megan. Hi, Kathryn. Thanks for being here with me.
Thank you for inviting me. I'm delighted to be here. It's my pleasure.
So let's get started with your paper about temporality of food ethics. very keen to talk to you about this today. So could you tell our listeners what the summary of your paper is?
Sure, yeah. So I think it's a it's a fairly common experience to feel like we don't have time to eat well. And there's research showing that people report this as a barrier to eating healthily, which is one, one way many of us think about eating well. But we can make a distinction between what we might call the reality of time how much time we have to eat and our lived experience of time. So like, sometimes like today, usually, I only had 20 minutes between classes, and I forgot my lunch. All that was available was like vending machine chips. So like, there's a reality there of Time, time to eat. But you know, other times, we might literally have time to eat a meal. But we might feel like it's a waste of our time to prepare or acquire and eat what we might think of as like a healthy meal or a good meal, we might feel like there are more urgent and important things to do, than to sit down and share a meal with other people are, you know that our time is just not well used by eating in a particular way, even if we think that that is a good way to eat. So you can feel like you don't have time, even if you in a sort of material, concrete sense do. And these sort of feelings are a part of our lived experience of time or temporality. So this paper explores the relationship between how we experience time, and the ways that we eat and what the ethical implications of that relationship might be. So I draw on phenomenology to suggest that eating and temporality are in dynamic relationship with one another. So like our experience of time, say, as a scarce resource is running out like as we never have enough time, that informs what and how we eat. So things like eating in the car on the bus, choosing to go through a drive thru multitasking while you eat all those things make a lot of sense when you experience time as a scarce resource. But I also argue that the ways that we eat can shape how we experience time. So our eating can reinforce a particular way of experiencing time. Or we can engage in specific eating practices, to try to change how we experience time. So that's kind of an abstract, like, theoretical claim. But in the paper, I argue that this actually matters for feminists bioethics and food ethics, because there can be significant downsides, I guess, two different ways of experiencing time. And so in the paper, I compare and critique a few different ways of experiencing time and the eating that's linked to it. So for example, I mentioned, you know, experiencing time as a scarce resource that we have to manage. And in the paper, I call that clock time, which is a name from Raymond Boisvert's work, but experiencing time like that can produce a lot of anxiety, you know, that you're not doing time, right? You know, it can also encourage us to disconnect from others, or to overlook connections that are there in the interest of saving ourselves time. But as I argue, in the paper, you know, our food choices and our eating actually, deeply connect us to others, like in our local communities, but also around the globe, food producers, you know, the animals that that are raised as part of the food system, food workers, environment, all that stuff. So it's actually like a significant ethical issue if we ignore the ways that we're connected to others through food. But the argument is that this way of experiencing time can actually encourage that. So if that's true, then we might have a reason to want to experience time differently. Maybe in a way that's less anxiety provoking, or one that opens up possibilities for acknowledging and appreciating our connections with them. others through food, in particular. So in the second part of the paper, after I sort of discuss, you know, clock time eating and go through some of the critiques of that, I think about how we could cultivate an alternative experience of time through our food through our eating. And specifically there, I think about intuitive eating as a practice that, I argue, actually explicitly tries to change how we experience time. And it kind of centers that as necessary for, for eating well. And, you know, I think that, that's really interesting and promising. Ultimately, I have some critiques of of that too. But, you know, the bottom line of the paper is really to draw attention to this dynamic relationship between eating and temporality and the ethical implications of that. So it's kind of like adding a layer of complexity to our understanding of good eating like a, like a temporal layer. To that, to that question of what counts as good eating and, you know, so maybe part of what makes some eating good, and some eating less good is the kind of experience of time that is linked to. So that yeah, that's, that's what this paper smell.
Yeah, thank you. And I wonder if you could say something about what made you want to write those papers, there's something like thinking about time and eating, is this something that you've been working on for a little while.
So I'm really interested in thinking about eating in general, and all of the different ways that eating matters, ethically, so, you know, I sometimes describe my research as at the intersection of bioethics and food ethics, but I actually like don't care that much about food. I think there's, there's a lot of good work out there about like the ethics of food production and distribution, and, you know, food sovereignty and all of that stuff. But I actually think that eating as an activity is super ethically rich and complex, and in ways that are often like just not recognized or under appreciated. So just, for example, in bioethics, when we talk about eating and the ethics of eating, it's often really flattened out into either, you know, it, eating matters ethically, because it's an instrumental way of achieving health or promoting health. And it matters ethically, because it's a way to express our autonomy, you know, freedom of choice, you know, and you get this old and like, I'm sure everyone who listens, this podcast probably feels similar to me, it's like very tired way of setting up bioethical problems, and it's just like health versus autonomy, you know? Yeah. And so I'm really interested in thinking about, okay, but what are all the other ways that eating matters ethically, you know, and I'm not saying autonomy is not important. And so it's health, right. But there are just a lot of other ways in which eating matters to us as humans. And so part of my overall research project is just to enrich our understandings and our conversations about eating, and to help us make better judgments about what counts as good eating and good eaters. So one of the ways I think it matters is in relation to temporality. So that's kind of where this paper, you know, I think there's some really interesting work in phenomenology that's like pointing us toward that, that I drawn in the paper, but the implications of that for people who care about, you know, feminist food ethics, feminist bioethics, you know, the ethics of intervening on people's eating, I didn't see that being, you know, acknowledged at all. So, I was kind of just motivated to bring these resources from this other area of philosophy into, to try to kind of bring it into these other areas of conversation are where people care about the ethics of eating, but the ethical richness of eating and a lot of the literature is quite thin, I guess is the right way to put that there are some people in food ethics and bioethics who are trying to enrich our understanding of of eating beyond that sort of health versus autonomy thing and, you know, and Barnhill is one person who's been working on this a bit and she has a new book with Matteo Bernardi. about it that's like centrally, like eating matters, Food Matters for all of these reasons. And, you know, public health folks really need to take this seriously. And I think that's great. But the one issue that I have with with their approach is that it's a very, it very much presupposes, like a liberal subjects, like somebody who has already a set of values, plans, preferences, goals, and eating is a way to, you know, achieve or sort of instantiate a lot of different goals. But I think that eating also is a way to to shape our subjectivity shape ourselves in ways that isn't really captured by that view, you know, the ways that we eat and understand eating, and so think about ourselves as eaters. I really think they inform what we care about our preferences or values or self understandings, as well as our temporality, which is what I argue here. Which then like structures, even what kinds of eating or seem possible, or like, appeal to us. So that's something that I really want to add to this conversation. Like, I think it's not just about saying, you know, eating matters in more ways than folks have been acknowledging, because it does, but it also is a way of shaping the self. And I think that sort of like dynamic processes, you know, familiar to a lot of feminists who who work on agency and those sorts of, you know, relational autonomy and those sorts of issues, but the role that eating plays there, I think has been under discussed.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you a question about the kind of the position of the value of health because in the paper, you talk about this idea of health ism, which maybe you can explain to the readers in a sec, because it's, it seems important for like, there's two ways where the influence of health ism influences our use of time when we're eating. So I think on the one hand, you talked about clock time, and that kind of like anxiety around maximizing our time and using our time wisely and this kind of thing. So you were talking about using our drink, or drinking, I guess eating Soylent is a kind of like, very efficient means of obtaining all the nutrients we need. So there's like, an idea where we're both maximizing time, we're being very efficient with our time, and we're doing something that's healthy because Soylent is supposed to be this sort of like healthy balanced food thing, meal replacement. But then on the other hand, I think you were talking about intuitive eating and what you call in the paper stomach time, which is super interesting idea. And the idea that actually, it's from the from the perspective of health ism, and thinking about a critique of health ism, they're kind of similar in that the goal is still number one, health. Number two, enjoy eating. So in the summertime Intuitive Eating case, it's that you take your time, you're very attentive. So I may be jumping ahead a little bit here. But I just thought that this was so interesting. And when you were talking about how, you know, our diagonal, our dialogues are so often framed as this contrast between autonomy and health, it just instantly made me think of this point that you're making the paper about health ism, and how it influences how we approach eating, kind of in both of these ways.
Yeah, yeah. So I guess, yeah, I'll start with what is health ism. So health ism is this concept that shows up in a lot of philosophical literature, but also, you know, sociology, anthropology on on health. And it's basically identifying this framework that's sort of in the background of societies the argument and then it's more or less explicit, but in different areas, the idea is that health is taken to be an on questionable value. Like it's, it's obvious that health is valuable, but not just valuable, like it is, should be prioritized over pretty much anything else. And then, the other piece is that it's really on individuals to acknowledge sort of the truth about the value of health and to and to organize their lives around the pursuit of health. And the, the claim would to say, like, our society is healthiest doesn't mean everybody actually buys into it. But then it's this sort of like background like horizon. This is like a phenomenological way of putting it. It's like this horizon of meaning, like against which everybody's behaviors make sense? So like, even if you yourself are like, I don't care that much about health, like I'm really a hedonist about eating I love I just, you know, I'm a foodie, I just want to enjoy my food. It would still make sense to you have someone be like, Yeah, but what about your cholesterol or like, you know, like that this sort of objection to your choices about food? Makes sense to you? Because it's like, well, yeah, you know, health matters, and everyone should value health in some way, etc. Even if some individuals choose not to pursue that you're always sort of open to that critique of like, but what about what about health? So, in this paper, I argue that, you know, one of the things that I talk about is this clock time idea, which comes from the phenomenologist. Rainbow bear. And he says like, this is a very common way of people of how people in contemporary sort of Western societies experience time. It's a common form of temporality that we experience time as sort of, like, empty, fungible units that it's up to us to spend wisely. And it's our responsibility as individuals. And like I said, that's sort of contributes to anxiety. And he thinks also to like, the sense of meaninglessness in our lives. Just sort of like an existential phenomenological critique. And one of the things I argue is that, you know, I think there's a lot of value in there. But one of the things I think he's missing is the acknowledgement of this health ism. And the way that health is actually I want to say, like, gets layered on top of clock time, or integrated into clock time somehow, and it changes the quality of how we experience time. And also what kinds of eating are appealed to us, and makes sense to us, based on how we experience time, so it's still all about anxiety, like I'm not spending my time well. But if you think it's not just about you spending your time, however you want, you know, sort of exercising your, your free autonomy no matter what your values and goals are. But if if we assume that you, every rational person will be prioritizing health, then you have to be prioritizing health, also with how you spend your time. And so there's this extra sort of layer of normative push there, to how to spend your time well. And that includes how you spend your time with food, right. So there's a pretty widespread assumption that it takes a lot of time to eat healthy, but I kind of mentioned before. So these products like Sunnylands, which is like a meal replacement product, I never actually tried it, I don't know if it tastes good or not. But it's supposed to supposed to be like a way to optimize your health, it's not just, you know, fill your stomach when you're really busy. So you can get through like, so you don't have a blood sugar crash, and you can get through your day, which, you know, there are a lot of food products out there that kind of fulfill that role. But the idea is if if we're helpless, you know, then it's not good enough to just fill your stomach so you can get on a bit like on with your day, you have to always be thinking, how can I promote my health? You know, and sometimes that might take more time, then just drinking Soylent, and, you know, within a health this framework, well, okay, it's still time well spent, is not the most efficient way to fill up your stomach, which, you know, just a pure sort of clock time, seems like that would be okay. You have to also be prioritizing your health. And so, you know, I in the paper, I argue like that can create even more anxiety because it's, you know, also eating healthy is confusing. And so it's kind of harder for us to feel like we spend our time well, and not to mention all those structural constraints on people's lives, given their you know, care obligations and work and so on that make it really difficult for us to spend our time how we would see fit. But yeah, so you know, I contrast this clock time, and this health is clock time to stomach time, which also a term that comes from Boisvert. And he he argues that stomach time is in some ways, like better than clock time. So he thinks it's, it's less anxiety provoking, it's going, it's going to create more meaning a meaningfulness in your experience of time, because it's really stomach time, it's thinking about time as as deeply connected to place and to activities and to what's happening in the, in the place and time that you're in. So we can think about something like harvest time as exemplary of stomach time. So it's like harvest, the harvest needs to happen when it needs to happen, things ripen when they ripen, and you have to respond by harvesting them and then harvest times over when you're done with the harvesting. Right? So it's not like empty, fungible units, you can't move harvest time to, to, you know, whenever you would find it convenient, it just it's happening. It's happening here. And you have to respond to that. And, you know, whoever thinks that we can cultivate that sort of experience of time around eating as well. And in the paper, I argue that I think this is what Intuitive Eating is also kind of going for is you can think of, you know, dinner time as a time that is responsive to like when you get hungry in the evening and if you pay Pay attention to your body, if you will, and you and you learn to listen to it, which is a big part of intuitive eating, like, Listen accurately to it, which, you know, they think we're really, we're all very bad at that well, and we need to practice a lot and everything. But if we do it, then our bodies will tell us now is the time to eat. And in an intuitive eating, our bodies are also going to tell us eventually, if we practice enough, like what to eat, and then we're supposed to pay attention. So they will tell us, Oh, I'm done. And then you know, then dinner time was over. So we can experience time, stomach time, in this way as like sort of a call and response where your body calls you like, Hey, I'm hungry. I want pasta or whatever. Okay, great. And then you and then you do it, and you feed yourself and you pay attention. This is where the enjoyment you mentioned comes in. It's like really interesting, intuitive eating. In particular, enjoying your food is really central, but it's because enjoying your food is a way that your body tells you when it's had enough, or that you're eating the right thing. It's not enjoyment, for enjoyment sake, really, but it's enjoyment, sort of like instrumentalized for getting, you know, appropriately responding to what your body needs. So, so yeah, to go back to the health isn't p so I argue is that intuitive eating is also health as like it's explicitly prioritizing health, it's sold as like a non diet diet, you know, it was developed by some nutritionists who think, who argue that most of the ways people diet right now are counterproductive. They, they prevent us from listening to our bodies, they actually actively cult, like, ask us to ignore our bodies in ways that are bad for our health. And so they're saying, Look, if we really care about health, this is the way that we get to achieve it. So, you know, it is extremely focused on health. And I think that, that influences also the sort of experience of time that you would cultivate through these, you know, intuitive eating practices, or, you know, even if you were going to kind of follow up with various suggestions, the sort of stomach time practices that we could cultivate, if we didn't intentionally sort of try to be critical of the health ism piece. You know, one thing I think is important is like, okay, so drinking Soylent, intuitive eating, I'm saying they're both pretty healthiest, but they're still they still have like, they're very different. And they have different implications for how we feel and experience ourselves and time and understand ourselves and so on. And I think, I think it's still helpful to point out those differences. And, you know, not just to say, Well, th ey're both healthiest and health ism is a problem. So
we're not, just like, chuck that away, you know, if, if health ism is so pervasive as right, I think it is, and, you know, people argue that it is, it's going to be really hard for us to get out of that. So it's at least worth thinking about, like, well, what's better and worse, if we're, if we're going to be stuck within this sort of framework of health ism? What are better and worse ways we can, you know, live and eat within that.
Were there any particular sort of objections or anything that you felt like you needed to address when you were writing this paper?
I so I will say that, when I originally wrote this paper, it was part of my dissertation. Several years ago, it's been revised substantially since then. But this part of my dissertation was like, the most controversial, partly that was because they felt that I was trying to argue for intuitive eating in sort of an uncritical way. And so you know, I, I, I don't mean to be saying, like, Hey, everyone, intuitive eating that will fix all of our, like, both eating problems and our temporality. That's not, that's not what I'm trying to say, I think I want to be able to sort of critically analyze and engage with intuitive eating, I do think it's very, you know, promising in a lot of ways. The some of the reasons that I mentioned in the paper, but also just in general it you know, there's a lot of evidence that intuitive eating can be a helpful way to eat. For folks who have been kind of stuck in like a weight loss dieting framework, it can be really empowering and it produces a lot less like shame and self blame. Then other diets, which I think is really important, but But yeah, so I really wanted to clarify that like I was not Just uncritically saying like, here's a better way to do things that will solve over problems. And so, you know, I've kind of worked to be a bit more equivocal, I guess it's weird for a philosopher to, to try to make the paper like less argumentative way, but that was that was kind of one of my goals. And I will say like the one of the most challenging things about writing this paper is that I was really trying to explain phenomenological ideas, so that folks who had never read phenomenology could understand them. And so I do end up doing like a lot of background sort of work in the paper. And I, you know, phenomenology can be very jargony. And I think that I really, I love phenomenology. I think it's so interesting, it has a lot to offer, but like, it's it for me at least it was very bewildering when I first started reading it, because a lot of jargon, a lot of concepts that have very specific meanings that you wouldn't know, if you, you know, if you've reached first encountering the word, for example, like horizon I mentioned earlier, that's a that's a technical term, you know, and phenomenology. And, so rereading the paper before this interview, I realized, like, you know, I still have some room to grow in explaining complex ideas in an accessible way. But that was, you know, that was a central aim that I had for the paper. And I think I'm continuing to work on that. But that was, that was one of the most challenging cases of, of this research.
Oh, that's very interesting. So we're, we've quickly come to the end of our time, it's such an interesting topic. Do you think that you have any kind of primary takeaway message that you want people to glean from the, from reading the paper or from listening to our conversation?
Yeah, I hope that people will just take away the idea that eating as an activity is like, ethically interesting. And that the relationship between eating and our experience of time is worth thinking about. I just think like, if it's true that the ways we experience time constrain how we can eat or, or what kinds of eating seem like attractive to us or even possible, then, especially folks who are interested in intervening on people's eating, like trying to make people eat healthier or whatever, a more sustainably, like, that seems really important and relevant. And also the idea that, you know, if we do change how people eat, that it might impact their temporality and, and that can have all sorts of effects on, you know, wide, widespread areas of people's lives. I think that's really worth thinking carefully about. Yeah, I hope that I hope that the takeaway,
great. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me.
Thank you. That's great.
My pleasure. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this episode of fat gab. You can find Megan's paper linked in this episode's notes along with the transcript of our discussion. Fab Gab is hosted and produced by me Kathryn MacKay. You can find our other episodes on Spotify, Apple podcasts, radio public or wherever you get your podcasts of quality. Thanks again for listening