After a grueling and torturous year of starving at Cornell, all I wanted was to go home and eat my mother’s delicious cooking for an entire summer. I wanted to walk through the kitchen on a sunny afternoon and let the tantalizing aroma envelope my body and soul. My lips would begin to quiver as I bring the food closer to my mouth. My taste buds would tingle and a glistening tear would fall down my cheek as I slowly chewed, savoring every moment, every second, thanking God that I lived to experience this once more.

Sadly, I came home to find that my mother had gone to Taiwan for the summer, and my crazy aunt and skinny-health-freak-vegetarian cousin were staying with us for a few weeks. I almost burst into tears when I saw that my Welcome Home dinner was cubes of tofu and some leaves with rice. The next night, it was tofu with grass. The night after that it was more tofu with more leaves. I found myself growing weaker as the days passed. I didn’t have money for food outside because I had an unpaid internship, which consisted of sitting around and thinking about how hungry I was. My friends began to worry because I was growing increasingly irritable whenever they talked about their delicious dinners at home. I would involuntarily drool as I watched Man v. Food and weakly reach out towards the TV, hoping the food would just appear within my grasp.

“Mom, please come home,” I begged over the phone. “I miss your food … and you, of course.”

“Well, that’s sweet,” she said in a bored tone.

“Your sister is trying to starve me,” I said frantically. “And your sister’s daughter looks like she could walk through the cracks of the walls.”

“Please stop being so dramatic,” she said with a sigh. “They’re being very healthy, and I think it’s good. You should think about what you eat more often.”

“Blasphemy!” I gasped. “Please, Mom, save me.”

Long story short, she didn’t save me. Instead, she lectured me about how I should stop exaggerating everything. Since that was a useless endeavor, I armed myself with my credit card and went to the grocery store. Psychology says that you should never go to the grocery store when you’re hungry because you buy more than you should. Well, during this time, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about psychology — I just wanted to eat something filling. And that is the story of how I got a part of my credit card debt.

But the tragedy doesn’t end here. As the weeks of summer flitted by, I began to notice that people around me were haughtily proclaiming their health-freakiness and rubbing it in my sunken and gaunt face. My friends and I went to the beach and roasted marshmallows on the bonfire. We noticed one person wasn’t joining in, and we handed him the bag of marshmallows.

“I’m a vegan,” he said with his nose in the air. “There are chicken tendons in marshmallows. I’d rather starve.”

And then he went on to talk about the health benefits of being a vegan and how unhealthy we were for eating meat. Jesus, who even invited this emo-scene-punk dude to the beach? A few days after that, I was reprimanded by a vegetarian friend of a friend for talking about craving a steak with mashed potatoes. Really, now?

After a summer of this healthy eating nonsense, I just have one thing to say: “No, shut up, let me finish this pizza, and you just go along your merry way, OK?” If you want to eat tofu and leaves, by all means, be my guest. But don’t talk about how disgusted you are as I’m trying to eat. Like most college students, I enjoy eating delicious foods, and I’ll eat whatever I can get. I don’t have the luxury to be picky right now. I’m pretty sure I have enough common sense in me to know when I’m being ridiculously unhealthy, so calm down.

Food is an important part of our lives. You can get to know someone by sitting down and sharing a great meal, or you can learn about an entire culture based on how or what they eat. It’s understandable to be worried about how unhealthy most people are with their eating habits. Eating, these days, doesn’t seem like an act of communion anymore. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in America; our nation’s obesity is both shocking and a little revolting.

But if you are really concerned with someone’s health, talk to them as you would talk to a friend — casually and lightly. Otherwise, you just sound like you’re touting your own horn and bragging about how healthy you are. Unless your friend is morbidly obese and on the brink of death, why would even waste your energy telling them how or what to eat? Everyone knows this only causes them to secretly roll their eyes and start eating sticks of butter (Mmm, delicious).

Sandie Cheng is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She may be reached at scheng@cornellsun.com. That One, Please appears alternate Wednesdays this semester.