Food for Thought: The Connection between Objectivist Ethics and Diet
by Jana Beck
In “The Objectivist Ethics,” the first essay in The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand states, “An organism’s life depends of two factors: the material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from its physical background, and the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel properly.” She also emphasizes, “Life can be kept in existence only by a constant process of self-sustaining action.” Most of Objectivist ethics is concerned with determining the proper action(s) in a given context. Little time, if any, is spent considering the first factor Rand mentions--the physical fuel humans must ingest to continue living. Why? Doesn’t it matter what kind of energy is used to fuel the body? It is obvious that how the fuel is obtained is important. It is proper to buy food (with money that has been earned) rather than steal it. But is the choice between eating a Twinkie or an apple an ethical one? About six months ago I had an experience that helped me answer this question.
I started my first year of college this year, and a friend from high school came to visit me over the Thanksgiving break. After we had dinner the first night, my friend remarked on the enormous quantity of food I had eaten and wondered how it was possible that I had recently lost fifteen pounds. I rationalized that the excessive hunger and weight loss resulted from the fact that I didn’t have a car on campus and had to walk a lot. Over the course of the next three days, my friend also noticed that I had developed the habit of drinking at least two liters of water a day. After she returned home, she confirmed her suspicions with her mother and then confronted me: she told me that I might have diabetes, and she made me promise to make a doctor’s appointment.
I am ashamed to admit that I was reluctant to do so. I looked up diabetes on the internet and confirmed that all of the symptoms my friend had noticed--excessive thirst, excessive hunger, excessive urination, and unexplained weight loss--matched the symptoms of diabetes. In addition, I found out that diabetes can lead to poor circulation in the feet, resulting in numbness or--what I had recently noticed on my heels--dry, cracked skin. The evidence, in short, was overwhelming, but still I delayed going to the doctor until I returned home for Christmas vacation. When I first spoke to my endocrinologist, he told me I was incredibly lucky. Had I delayed going to the doctor a few more days I probably would have gone into a diabetic coma, which in turn could have resulted in permanent damage to my kidneys.
The truth, of course, is that I didn’t deserve to be so lucky. I should have gone to the doctor before my friend even recognized my symptoms; the strange, sudden weight loss alone should have been enough to get me into a doctor’s office. Why? Because of the same principle that forms the basis for Objectivist ethics: conservation of energy. I can remember one day when I ate a stack of pancakes smothered in syrup, sausage links, and a donut at breakfast, and then two hours later I bought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and ate the whole thing in one sitting. And I was losing weight. You don’t have to be any kind of a mathematical genius to see that the equation doesn’t balance. Something was wrong, and I knew it, but I tried to deny the existence of the problem. I’m lucky it didn’t cost me more than it did.
Realizing my (horrifying and shameful) mistake has led me to ruminate on the relationship between Objectivist ethics and diet. Now that I have been diagnosed with diabetes, I am reminded at least four times a day (when I check my blood glucose and take my insulin injections) that reason is necessary for survival. I can prove--with physical evidence--that reason is what keeps me alive. Reason is what I use to calculate my insulin doses. Were I to abandon reason and either stop taking my insulin or take arbitrary, random amounts of insulin, I would die--sooner rather than later. I also use reason to decide what I’m going to eat, to decide that no matter how good a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream would taste, I will eat a balanced meal instead. These are ethical choices. In addition, they are choices that non-diabetics, as well as diabetics, have to make. As Ayn Rand puts it, “An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil.” Or, in the common tongue: you are what you eat.
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