Food or pills
If scientists came up with pills that taken three times a day provide all energy needed by your body, would anyone here take them instead of feeding as you do now? Personally, I see human taste buds as deceptive. For me and, I think I could safely say, most others, that which is tasty is almost always bad for the body so I would have no problem with taking pills instead of food. What are your thoughts on this?
Food is one of the finest pleasures in life. Pills over food? No thank you.
Pills for nourishment, food for pleasure. Hellz yeah!
Pardicat,
But considering the pills’ hypothetical effectiveness and today’s food’s evident ineffectiveness at being healthy, especially when tasty, wouldn’t one lead a better life taking pills instead of eating food, considering that the pills would probably yield a physically healthier person? Don’t you think a lot of problems in society would be taken care of if everyone had the exactly right amount of nutrition necessary to lead a healthy life, i.e. if everyone was healthy? Sure eating food as we do now, in our backwards pre-pill society, is thought of as one of life’s finest pleasures, but don’t you think that switching over to pills would be a blessing and, after some time and ingenuity on the parts of producers, also pleasurable.
Mental_Edge,
I can see it now: The government making food illegal, and people such as yourself going to buy uncooked pizza, measured in metric form, from Columbian guys downtown to then shoot up the slices with your hippie liberal friends in a dark basement, while watching hippie “classics” such as Iron Chef or Chocolat, and I predict the word “dude” will be used as extensively as it is now; possibly in arguments about how the only reason the man has made food illegal is because he can’t profit from it, or maybe that, dude, some government official with some considerable power has a personal interest in seeing pills be the only thing to eat, dude. 
Uhh…no.
I’m talking about pills as a necessity and food as a luxury. You don’t see the Board of Education banning TVs so the can make a profit.
Food over pills,I hate ulcers and pills would do nothing for that. But, a thick PBJ with a tall cold glass of whole milk or steak, or lobster, or roast or fried potatoes or creamy pasta, or … food … I will stick with that and my supplements thankyou.
Is food not simply a means to an end? A delicious one at that, but also mostly most damaging when delicious. The hypothetical pills I’m proposing would be exactly what your body needs in terms of nutrition, and I don’t see why it couldn’t be flavored so as to also be delicious. So, Kriswest, the pills would most likely fix your ulcers, well maybe if not yours then most other’s ulcers, better than the food they pick to eat based on their taste buds would, which as I said are deceptive. Your taste buds will not tell you to go lick a stone, as a dog’s I think do, when you’re in need of some mineral. In fact, they will most likely point you in the same direction that caused that deficiency in you in the first place exacerbating it until it kills you.
Think about it. Pop the morning pill, and go about your day with exactly as much energy as you’ll need. Not more than you need, so it turns into fat, or less so it wears you out. For the record, this is not some advertisement for this new and improved pill…only 19.99…just kidding. I am actually curious as to what everyone’s kneejerk reaction would be. The hypothetically pill’s I’ve introduced are clearly better at doing what food is intended to do, but I think eating in itself has become ritualized…no longer just a means to keep the body going, but an end in of itself…and in so doing, the former means, i,e. food, is no longer thought of off in ways of being improved so to yield a better end, as we do with all means. Maybe that’s the cause of the fatass epidemic in America. They no longer eat so to sustain themselves through the day; they eat so to eat. Their identities are derived , in part, from eating. “You are what you eat” apparently means more than I thought it did.
I think, almost instinctively, you all tried to defend food. In my vision of a super man, man would not have his time preoccupied with finding food, or in finding an environment to suit his fragile body. I envision a time in the future where a man will strap on a couple cinder blocks to his sides, grab a flashlight and jump off in the middle of the pacific ocean to do some exploring at the bottom…assuming, off course, he took the pill that protects against that sort of thing. What use is science if not for this purpose? Doctor Moreau had the right idea.
The highest form of freedom we as a species can achieve is in guiding our own evolution to our own desires…sad thing is we can, but don’t want to ( I think we’re afraid we’ll fuck things up, so we toss the dice and leave it to nature to change us, thereby it’ll be no one’s fault if/(probably)when we as a species take a turn for the worse in our inevitable evolution).
I see science years from now trying desperately to keep man as he is now; fighting against nature’s attempt to change us …possibly attempting to change everything around us so it’s habitable to our bodies. Just you see…in a couple billion years when the earth will have been destroyed, we will be living in some giant dome, still as humans, struggling to keep ourselves alive and human, instead of floating around space, with cockroach skin, unrecognizable as humans, at light speed checkin’ out that supernova way the hell over there in the distance.
[/rant]
To me, pills for food makes about as much sense as everclear for booze.
Beer is one the the great passions of my life – the way it tastes, the way it smells, all of that. Ahhhh, love the stuff. Do I get drunk from it? Occasionally, ok, even somewhat often. But that is just a small part of the overall experience. To mistake drunkenness for drinking is the same mistake as nutrition for food or an orgasm for sex.
Sorry , I like the feeling of a full stomach not an embarrassing rumbling one and no pill can stop that gurgle. Unless its an add water pill than why bother?
It’s clear that we find most pleasurable that which defines us best. The problem is we are not [static]; we become; but we cling onto, instinctively I believe, to that which we believe to be - the form that is mankind. We play it safe. Go with what works [enter my example of us two billion years from now trying to stay within the confines of that form either by counter-doing our becoming, or changing the circumstances of the environment so to keep us human]
If eating and drinking were replaced with the pill, new pleasures would be had surrounding that new way of being - i.e. the new mankind form would probably have new pleasures surrounding it. After some time, if the pill won over eating, I suspect the pill will become preferred over the next, arguably better, thing. In short, my problem here is with the will to be [the mankind form], of which eating, as ridiculous as it sounds, becomes an indicator off once I proposed the pill.
Ultimately, this will come back to the natural/unnatural debate, in which one party will think what nature, i.e. not us, has made of us is best, and what we would [did] make of ourselves is bad. I, off course, don’t think so. I believe self-directing our becoming is the next best thing to causa sui - in lieu of self-creating, self-directing is the highest form of freedom.
Kriswest,
To each their own.
That would seem to presume that freedom is in some way desirable.
I voted food, but I’m changing my mind. Upon considering the advances in medical science, I have to admit that the world is a better place now that the solution for everything is to simply take a pill. Could I get a food pill that gave me heartburn? Could it also constipate me? Then I could take a heartburn pill and a laxative. Then if I started to worry about my kidneys or something from all the pills getting pumped through, I could just take another pill for anxiety. If I can’t get strong enough anxiety pills and my hair starts to fall out from the stress I can just take one to make it grow back. By then my kidneys will be on the way out, and the stress will be too much, so I can get a super nerve pill, or just take two of them, and maybe even a pain killer to help me along to death.
Ok new family scene. Mom standing over a counter with little glasses dumping pills into each…
" Get in here and get your pills! Take them now or I will send them to poor kids in countries where they have to eat real food!.
You brats don’t apreciate the work it takes to coordinate these pills!. I have spent a whole 5 minutes doing this, I could have been googling! If your Fathermother were here she would… Pause your games and Get in here now or I swear to Bill Gates the almighty, that I will force you to eat real food!
Sounds lovely ! 