I reach perhaps my greatest convergence of outlook with author Barbara Kingsolver in this latest excerpt from her 2007 book "Animal Vegetable Miracle," to the point of wanting to effect that quizzical look puppies evince when they see something that truly flummoxes them:

For most people everywhere, surely, food anchors holiday traditions. I probably spent some years denying the good in that, mostly subconsciously — devoutly refusing the Thanksgiving pie, accepted the stigma my culture has attached to celebrating food, especially for women my age. Because of the inscriptions written on our bodies by the children we've borne, the slowing of metabolisms and inevitable shape-shifting, we are supposed to pretend if we are strong-willed that food is not all that important. Eat now and pay later, we're warned. Stand on the scale, roll your eyes, and on New Year's Day resolve to become a moral person again. [Page 288]

I acknowledge that some of my confusion lie on Venus-and-Mars boundaries, but I have to ask: On which planet has the culture attached a stigma to celebrating food? Entire cable channels exist only to celebrate it, ogle it, create it, glorify it. In connection with a story I think will be in the Boston Globe this week, I learned that sales in school cafeterias go up on the days the "celebrity chef" is in the house. We not only celebrate it, we celebrate with it: The Little League has a big win, they get ice cream. The office staff comes through a big project, the boss springs for pizza. We celebrate food, and with food, to an excess, IMO.

In her next paragraph, which I didn't quote just because the excerpt was long already, Kingsolver concedes that after a certain age, people can't make pie a habit but still says: c'mon, on Thanksgiving? I take her point: Everything in her narrative indiciates she's a normal, healthy eater, and goodies are a normal part of eating. No argument whatsoever.

However. A key point required in this commentary is that not all people are normal eaters, and for some people — my opinion is that we number in the tens of millions, which isn't a lot in a nation numbering above 300 million but is still a lot of people — this is not helpful. For some people, avoiding some substances almost always found in pie is practically a medicinal issue, and declaring a broad right to pie on holidays undercuts that. No, it's not the writer's responsibility to think about how every utterance will affect every person, so I'm not faulting Kingsolver. I'm just sayin'.