Can America be healthy without losing its humanity?

Recent calls to “Make America Healthy Again” are a welcome message at a time of mass food production, rising heart disease and various forms of cancer, and generally sedentary lives. A recent episode of Tucker Carlson’s podcast focused on the current status of health in America, especially the increase of chronic illnesses and the medical establishment’s insistence on treating sick Americans with prescription drugs, injections, and unnecessary surgeries. Instead, as Tucker and his guests argued, we should be asking what Americans are eating and what we can do — both collectively and individually — to heal ourselves.

Many factors influence this debate: Big Pharma, Big Agriculture, the medical establishment, and proper environmental stewardship without climate change ideology. Calling the corruption in all these areas “widespread” would be an understatement.

How can we define moderation in a society that is full of imbalance in almost every sphere of life?

Other important factors often go unnoticed in discussions about health. How we care for our bodies and minds is closely linked to Aristotelian moderation and a food culture that fosters lasting connections with others.

A tunnel-vision focus on “getting healthy” can create an obsession that severely harms our relationships with friends and family. This phenomenon even has a name: orthorexia nervosa. Unlike other eating disorders, it may stem from good intentions, but counting calories can lead to an obsessive need for complete control over food selection and preparation. This compulsion is not always about weight but about finding the purest ingredients, turning food and eating into matters of metrics, chemistry, and constant bodily monitoring.

Holiday meals and celebrations have been ruined by family members who insist that any food other than what they have chosen is poisonous and toxic. They claim allergies, to be on a perpetual diet, or that “I’m not that hungry.” They sit at the dinner table, staring at their clean plate, perhaps slightly embarrassed but mostly indignant about their dysfunction.

Such people have essentially alienated themselves from any sense of community and connection with others. They often inflict such neuroses on their own children. One wonders what will become of children raised on a steady diet of joylessness and fear.

Refusing a piece of fruit from a friend or family member because you can’t be sure if it’s organic is as dysfunctional as overeating and thinking that processed food has no effect on one’s health. What happened to moderation? More importantly, how can we define moderation in a society that is full of imbalance in almost every sphere of life?

Aristotle deemed moderation to be one of the moral virtues, and any sort of excess is bound to destroy that virtue. This includes our bodily health, which, for Aristotle, is inevitably connected to the notion of excellence.

In Book II of the “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle writes that “the excellence of a human being will be that disposition which makes him a good human being and which enables him to perform his function well.” In other words, to be human is to recognize the meaning of life itself, and the possible greatness we are made for. The notion of teleology is essential for our understanding of virtue — we are not a haphazard mess but living beings who should be moving toward harmony and order.

For Aristotle, both excess and deficiency will lead us away from the possibility of greatness and order, and this applies to our bodily health as well. It isn’t enough to simply measure the amount of food we eat, but we must understand that being moderate about eating and our health is a question of morality, not mere science. In other words, the decisions we make to steer away from excess and deficiency reveal the nature of our character.

Another element in this debate that is woefully missing has to do with food culture. Ideally, we share a meal with someone — a figurative or literal breaking of bread. There is a sacred dimension to all of this — the enjoyment of food is not simply based on appetite but on joy and gratitude for those around us.

I am reminded of Isak Dinesen’s short story “Babette’s Feast,” which encapsulates the joy and gratitude inherent in eating and sharing a meal with others. Babette Hersant is a French refugee in 19th-century Denmark, where she works as a housekeeper for two unmarried sisters. Babette wins the lottery, and instead of going back to France, she decides to make a feast for the sisters and their guests as a sign of gratitude and appreciation of being in their home.

The sisters live an ascetic life, and Babette’s meal awakens their senses. They not only feel enjoyment of eating but also of relating to the guests at the table. Instead of ascetic moralism, the sisters begin to show vulnerability that opens the possibility of forming a much deeper relationship with Babette.

One of the guests, Colonel Löwenhielm, is so taken by the feast that he decides to give a speech toasting this bounty and beautiful creation. “Man, my friends,” says the Colonel, “is frail and foolish. But in our human foolishness and short-sightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. For this reason, we tremble. … But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite.”

This moment could only have come from an authentic connection between human beings and not through overeating or orthorexia, which inevitably lead to alienation and atomization.

Self-governance in all matters — resisting the influence of government, Big Pharma, or any other corrupt establishment to alter our behavior or nature — lies at the heart of personal freedom. But this depends on one crucial element: virtue. When virtue, especially moderation, is present and paired with joy and gratitude, food and health go beyond mere statistics and become a pathway to human greatness.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.