Thanksgiving dinner seems a bit more problematic than usual this year.

I recently discovered that I have somewhat elevated blood pressure and triglycerides and blood sugar and bad cholesterol and who knows what all, so I had a nice long visit with a physician who specializes in helping people moderate their risk of heart disease, etc. I came away with lists of some foods I love—avocadoes, olive oil, almonds—some I don’t mind—corn tortillas, broccoli—and others I feel I may have to draw the line at, made-up foods with names like "Glenda" and "I Wonder If This Might Be Butter—Just Kidding."

Well, I would prefer to avoid an extended stay in the hospital, so I dutifully filled my cart this week with Swiss chard and tofu (which I haven’t touched yet), brown rice and roasted soy "nuts." No cheese. No mayonnaise. No sour cream. No butter.

Sigh.

Fortunately, my good intentions are reinforced by the book I am teaching this quarter in my college English class: Eric Schlosser’s best-selling Fast Food Nation. It’s a terrific example of cause and effect—a look at what the fast food industry has done to the United States. It’s also pretty good encouragement to eat better. My students and I have been learning all about how fat the French fries are, and how bad the meat is—not to mention how mistreated the workers and the animals are—and it’s certainly enough to send most people straight to the produce section of their grocery store.

But wait—a reprieve? I heard on National Public Radio this week that the Atkins diet—you know, the one where you eat as much fat and protein as you possibly can, the bacon diet, for heaven’s sake—beat out a low-fat diet, not just in weight loss, but also in lowering cholesterol.

It’s butter! It IS butter! I can’t believe I lived without butter!!!!

Okay—I have calmed down now. And a little investigation reveals that the study was funded by the Atkins foundation. Back to fruits, vegetables, etc. Back to what to eat for Thanksgiving dinner this year.

Perhaps a more philosophical approach will help: I went to the San Francisco Opera’s production of Hansel and Gretel last Sunday and it reminded me of what food is all about. Everyone is familiar with the story: starvation and feasting, loss and recovery. Eating and being eaten. Survival. Life and death.

Thanksgiving should take us back to this basic reality about food: that we eat to live. We come into this world crying for our mother’s milk; we munch and sip and nibble our way through life until finally, all too soon it seems, it is time for our last meal. We need reminding precisely because we do it every day, usually several times a day, often without even thinking. And if we do the shopping, cooking, and clean-up, on top of the worrying about trans-fats and refined sugar, it may be hard to be grateful.

But grateful is what we should be, grateful that we have not just food, but choices. What shall we have for Thanksgiving: turkey, grilled salmon, lentil loaf? Maybe some nice baked butternut squash with just a tiny bit of butter and maple syrup? I hear Starbucks has a terrific pumpkin latte.…

Whatever you eat on Thursday, the important thing is to be grateful you are alive, and that there is food on the table.

Whether we cook a turkey or eat a plate of tofu loaf with steamed spinach, we must not ignore the obvious: the starving, or those whose diet consists of rice or beans, day in and day out. Those whose local grocery stores are not, like ours here in the Napa Valley, vying to see which can provide the largest variety of cheese (two hundred, at last count). Those who are not making unpleasant choices involving soy products—but instead are watching their children fade away to nothing.

Eating, not eating. It’s a simple binary. Life. Death.

I prepared my mother’s final meal last March. In April I washed the dishes from my father’s last breakfast. Last Thanksgiving they ate at my house. Now they are gone.

In the memorable central scene of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, dinner is served. At the center of the meal is a perfect boeuf en daube, melting in its fragrant, golden juices, a dish that neither you nor I will be eating for Thanksgiving, I suspect.

The description of the meal is a perfect work of art, and the point of it is that the meal itself, not just the food, but the food and the people, the conversation, the light—indeed, the moment itself, which slips away almost before it can be noticed, is art. Beauty. Time. Life. Death.

This is the meaning of Thanksgiving: That you, and whoever you are with, are alive. Your heart is beating. Look at each other. Raise your forks and glasses to each other—whatever they contain.

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