developing_writing

CHAPTER EIGHT
FOOD CUSTOMS
The Pelican
A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than
his belican [“belly can”]
… from Dixon Merritt (1879­1954)
A pelican is a bird with a very large bill, or beak. He uses his beak to
pick up a lot of fish. He can’t eat all the fish at one time. He must hold
them in his beak until his stomach is ready. Of course, this doesn’t
bother the pelican at all. It is his habit to eat this way. However, it
seems strange to the poet Dixon Merritt.
People have food habits and customs, too. These are activities that
we do all the time. But people are different from pelicans. We tell our
children not to take too much food. “Your eyes are bigger than your
stomach,” we say. It is too bad to take more food than we can eat.
Other food customs tell us not to eat certain kinds of food. The
health food movement is new, but it is popular. These people don’t eat
much sugar, and they don’t drink strong coffee, tea, or alcohol.
Vegetarians don’t eat meat. There are many reasons for this. They
don’t want to kill animals. They don’t want to become fat, and meat
has a lot of fat. Some vegetarians just don’t like the taste of meat.
We have another saying about food: “One man’s meat is another
man’s poison.”
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