Dear World: You Are Eating Your Zip Code

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

Been eating better.

Reverting to my high school self who knows what has 0g of fat. My new favorite thing: rotisserie chicken. Buy two at a time now. Pull off the meat, salt, pepper, paper plate. No skin, obviously. I’m not an amateur.

You can’t eat things like skin when the stupidest-named organ in the body—your gallbladder—has decided it’s done with you and “your bullshit.” Instead, my gallbladder has decided that it’s leaving me and running off to Las Vegas. I tried to tell it that Las Vegas is gross, but try talking sense into an organ.

Since it’s been on protest, I’ve been having the BEST time. And, by “best,” of course I mean “9-hour stints of violent, gut-clenching, vomiting anytime I so much as think about a bowl of buffalo mac and cheese.”

Nine hours is The Duration. The moment I feel the first twinge coming on, I look at the clock, and I know: whatever I have planned for the next nine hours, is now cancelled. Whether I want it to be or not. Sometimes it happens during the day, and I’ve got to curl up in the fetal position on the big chair and just stare dizzily at the wall: the pain is so blinding, I can’t even pick up a book. And, what kind of a sick day is it if you can’t even pick up a book???

Sometimes it happens at night, which is always most excellent, because now you know you’re about to spend the next nine hours doing nothing but rocking back and forth on the side of the bed, like some traumatized kid in a horror movie who just killed his whole family.

Until the puking starts. The puking always starts, usually about 1-2 hours in.

For at least 7 whole interminable hours, I will be doing laps back and forth to the bathroom vomiting so, so violently, all the blood vessels burst in my face and I’ll look like a raccoon, until finally I’m left with dry heaving when there is no more food left in my intestines. That’s when I do my new favorite move: launch my limp body over the sink and press my face into the cool white countertop, because one minute you’re freezing and the next minute you’re sweating, and the thing about gallbladder attacks is that there’s no relieving the pain. At least when you’re just nauseated and you throw up, you feel better. That is not the case here. This is not nausea; this is hellacious, incapacitating clenching pain in your upper abdomen that makes your whole stomach swell and distend as if you were pregnant, while being too sore to even touch, so basically you just sway back and forth for nine hours hoping to fall down the stairs to be knocked unconscious.

Other people tell me they’ve had gallbladder attacks but they only last a couple hours and they also tell me they’ve never thrown up from it, so that’s comforting. Interesting plot twist. Either I’m not actually having gallbladder attacks and this is, in fact, an alien life form that’s taken up residency inside my guts, or everyone else’s gallbladders are weak little wannabes. My gallbladder is here to fuck shit up.

What’s even more thrilling is I’ve been to the ER over this and they’ve done CT scans and, haha, apparently I don’t have any gallstones. 🤷‍♀️ Which is what usually causes these attacks. Nope, no gallstones in sight. Just a big, swollen gallbladder. So, I’m excited for this invigorating new chapter of my life now known as: “The Rice Cake Era.” The doctor in the ER told me I was to only eat Cheerios until I could have the surgery.

Cheerios, doc???? Don’t you know I am a product of Atkins?!

Clearly this is the culprit. The Atkins diet of the early 2000s was all like, “Dude, EAT ALL THE CHEESE YOU WANT! Meat! Cheese! Eggs! Butter! Fat! Just whatever you do, don’t mess with those—*shudders in disgust*—grains.

So, what have I been doing my whole life?

Being a total A student and eating meat, cheese, and eggs like a champ. Haven’t had a bowl of cereal since ‘98.

Alas, maybe this is why my gallbladder is done with my bullshit.

Because apparently?

Fat, butter, oil is gallbladder public enemy #1.

(How many times have I said the word “gallbladder” in this post? Am I going to start ranking on SEO for this???)

Nothing fried. Nothing heavy. No butter. Nothing with oil. Not even my long-time family friend, olive oil, will pass the gauntlet—and so how am I supposed to survive? Everyone knows that “bread, oil, cheese, and wine” is THE quintessential traveler’s diet. (Even Atkins couldn’t interfere with that.)

Things I’ve discovered have way more fat in them than ANY SANE PERSON WOULD IMAGINE????

• Ken’s Honey Mustard: Was originally dipping my rotisserie chicken in this. Keep trying to get out of my HOT SAUCE ON EVERYTHING habit, so I had real high hopes for this one. I mean, usually when I hear “mustard” I hear “healthy,” but nope, not this one! Brace yourself for this breaking news: there are 11g of fat per two tbsp of Ken’s Honey Mustard, which is literally the same exact fat content as a dollar menu cheeseburger from McDonald’s. What. The. Fuck.
• Eggs: MY BELOVED EGGS. Did you know there’s 5g of fat in an egg? In an egg! I always knew that “gym people” just eat egg whites, but I always thought they were psychos. And yet! Here I am now, buying quart cartons of egg whites in bulk. (Still must figure out how to scramble these without it coming out looking like steamed placenta.)
• Can of tuna fish: You know what else has 5g of fat? A can of tuna! Don’t fret, it’s the can of tuna in oil (not water) but how horrible can life get? Even a nose-pinching can of tuna can take you down. I’m in mourning for my childhood. Please, take me back to when life was easy???????
• Olive tapenade: So chic! So mediterranean! And sooooooo…8-12g of fat. Olives are basically just little olive balloons. And since olives are literally pressed to make—hello—olive oil, you don’t even want these on your salad when your gallbladder is exploding. And most certainly, not on your rotisserie chicken (which I was totally doing to give it some flavor until I realized……..OH NO, THE GIG IS UP.)
• Ramen noodles: I don’t really eat this, but do you know what I discovered in my research? This fun fact most adults proooobably (???) don’t know: Instant noodles are packing 14g+ per package because—get this—the noodles are flash-fried in palm oil during manufacturing to dehydrate them for quick cooking. 🤯 And THAT, dear Watson, is why we can’t trust anyone. I feel so violated.
• Tostitos Scoops: Now, hear me out: I am not a chip person. I do not eat potato chips. Potato chips always seem like you are asking for it. HOWEVER, I do have this weird nostalgic love of this dip that my high school volleyball coach used to make when we’d have team retreats. The dip is deceptively simple: two cans of black beans, one block of cream cheese, and a few scoops of diced jalapeños. Now, I’ve adjusted this a bit: she used to use Hormel Chile with Beans, but a long time ago I decided my version was (a) Better for you; and (b) Somehow more delicious??? So, I’d always make this dip when I’d have people over when I lived in Costa Rica, and it was always a hit. And everyone was always like, “WHAT IS THIS MAGICAL SUBSTANCE?!” And then they’d be shocked when I told them it was literally just beans and creamcheese, and I felt like a culinary genius. However—and this is the real mind bender—you eat it with Tostitos Scoops. Oh my god, SO GOOD WITH TOSTITOS SCOOPS. Something I had firmly believed was not in the chip category. This false narrative has apparently kept me sane. Because, when I looked at the back of the bag the other day???? SEVEN. GRAMS. OF. FAT. FOR. TWELVE. CHIPS. And, my little balloon deflated right then and there. No wonder my gallbladder has been mad at me.

Anyway, I suppose I’d better get the beneficiaries listed on my accounts ASAP.

But, this is what you get when you live abroad for twenty years and then buy a farmhouse in the middle of rural America:

You will get gallbladder attacks.

Because inevitably, the culture will creep in, and so will the grease. What was once saved for a special occasion eventually becomes normalized on your plate. Because let’s be honest: it isn’t the eggs and the tuna doing you in. Rather, it’s the ambient food culture creeping in; the collective recalibration of what’s “reasonable”. Soon, you will find yourself eating the kinds of things you hadn’t touched in years: Mozzarella sticks. Extra crispy hot wings. Pierogies in butter. French fries smothered in bacon.

Did I mention the deep dish mashed potato pizza? That is also smothered in bacon?

Things like arugula salads aren’t only just not an option—they don’t exist here. They aren’t on any menu, because they aren’t familiar. There is no edamame appetizer. No cauliflower ceviche. No guacamole. No tuna poke. No quinoa bowl. No kale. No shrimp skewers. No hummus. No octopus.

None of these healthier menu items are a part of rural dining culture.

And, that matters. Access matters. What’s available to you matters, because what’s available to you is inevitably going to be what’s going in your mouth.

Eating is a language.

Eating is cultural.

And, that means that health is cultural, too.

Out of all the lessons I’ve learned during this rural experiment, this is a big one: no matter where you are, place seeps in. Place is the invisible hand. Place becomes a part of your DNA (maybe literally). And place changes who you become.

That’s a scary prospect, actually.

Scary to think that maybe we aren’t as in control as we thought; that maybe our environment really does matter.

And if that’s true?

Then this whole rugged-individualism, bootstrap-pulling fantasy we love to recite to ourselves starts to wobble.

Because maybe it isn’t always about discipline.
Maybe it isn’t about being a “good” eater.

Maybe it’s about geography.

Maybe it’s about availability. Maybe it’s about what’s within a ten-minute drive when you’re tired and it’s 7:42pm and you don’t feel like being heroic. Maybe it’s about what the server says with pride. Maybe it’s about what everyone else at the table orders without blinking.

We like to think identity is something we choose.

But so much of it is absorbed.
Ambient.
Osmotic.

You move somewhere, and slowly, imperceptibly, you begin to eat like that place eats.
You talk like that place talks.
You start to crave what that place craves.

And then one day you’re on your bathroom floor at 2am, bargaining with an organ that has decided it will no longer participate in your cultural assimilation.

Place is not neutral.
Place trains you.

It trains your palate.
It trains your portions.
It trains your sense of what’s “normal.”

And eventually, it trains your body.

Which is both terrifying and humbling.

Because if place can shape you this quietly, then maybe it can save you just as quietly. And that might be the bigger realization here.

Not that my gallbladder is dramatic.
(It is.)

But that environment is load-bearing.

And if I want a different outcome,
I may need more than egg whites.

I may need a different menu.
A different set of defaults.
A different environment.

For now, as long as there’s a rotisserie chicken, I’ll be good.