Stop Framing "Killing the Appetite" as a Medical Goal!
When I was growing up, gathering with the Italian-immigrant quadrant of my family meant that every meal began with the same ritual: everyone present wishing the rest of the family "buon appetit'!" May you have a good appetite! May you feel hungry, find this meal delightful and satisfying, and eat well. This is a very common world practice. The French say "bon app é tit;" in Finnish it is h yvää ruokahalua; and in Korean 맛있게 드세요 . Why? People wish one another pleasure in a meal as a social gesture of goodwill, just as you'd wish someone a good trip when they are about to travel. It's a gesture of hospitality. And it is also a wish for health, because we must eat well to survive, and traditional societies have always had a dread, not just of famines, but of the failing individual appetite that signifies that someone they care for is ailing. Will someone please remind contemporary American doctors of this fact? Recently, there's been a lot of repor