The big curse of America, to me, is skinless, boneless chicken

When Jim Harrison declared, “The big curse of America, to me, is skinless, boneless chicken breasts. They're banal and relatively flavorless. The rest of the world's trying to get some fat to eat, and we're trying to ban it from our diet,” he was not merely speaking of food — he was speaking of culture, of spirit, of what it means to live fully. His words carry the tone of lament, not against poultry itself, but against a civilization that has chosen fear over flavor, efficiency over artistry, and moderation over sensuality. To him, the skinless, boneless chicken breast is not just a meal — it is a metaphor for a society that has stripped life of its texture, its richness, and its soul.

The origin of this quote lies in Harrison’s lifelong reverence for the primal pleasures of existence — for food, wine, poetry, and the wild. As a novelist, poet, and lover of the natural world, he believed that eating was not a mechanical act, but a spiritual communion with life itself. In calling chicken breasts “banal,” he was not scorning simplicity, but emptiness — the absence of joy, of risk, of indulgence. For to Harrison, America’s obsession with purity and control — with removing fat, flavor, and mess — reflected a deeper malady: the fear of living too fully, the dread of excess that had drained vitality from the modern soul.

The fat he defends is not only culinary but symbolic — the richness of experience that sustains the heart as food sustains the body. In ancient times, fat was sacred. The Hebrews burned it on the altar as an offering to God, its smoke rising as a sign of gratitude. The Greeks and Romans prized it as a source of energy, fertility, and life. To deny it was to deny the body’s own joy. Harrison’s words echo that ancient reverence. When he says the rest of the world is trying to get some fat to eat, he reminds us that what one culture rejects as sin, another cherishes as survival. His lament is for a people who have turned nourishment into guilt, transforming the table — once an altar of connection — into a battleground of shame.

Consider the story of Epicurus, the philosopher who taught that pleasure, not pain, is the path to wisdom. But Epicurus did not speak of gluttony; he spoke of balance — of eating and drinking with gratitude, of delighting in simplicity without austerity. His meals were modest, yet rich in spirit. In his garden, he taught his students that to taste joy, one must neither deny nor drown in pleasure. Harrison’s complaint, then, is not against restraint, but against fear disguised as virtue. A nation that rejects fat because it fears imperfection has forgotten that true health — of body and of soul — comes not from denial, but from harmony.

Harrison’s imagery of the skinless, boneless chicken breast also evokes the stripping away of identity. What was once wild and whole has been sanitized, processed, and sold — robbed of its nature. In this way, he mourns not only food, but art, literature, and life itself. For in the pursuit of perfection, we have bleached out the very imperfections that make experience vivid and alive. The poet in him rebels against such sterility. To eat without fat is to read without poetry, to live without passion. Life, he insists, must be messy, flavorful, and full of risk, for that is where meaning resides.

There is a deeper irony, too, in his words: that while one part of the world prays for a morsel of nourishment, another prays to be delivered from abundance. The poor seek food; the rich seek restraint. Harrison’s critique is thus moral as well as sensual — a call to gratitude. To waste what others hunger for, to strip nourishment of joy, is to lose the sacred balance between need and pleasure. The curse he speaks of is not in the food, but in the soul that no longer knows how to eat, how to savor, how to live.

And so, the lesson of Jim Harrison is timeless: Do not fear the richness of life. Do not strip your days of their skin and bone in pursuit of safety or control. Whether in food, in art, or in love, allow yourself the fat — the flavor, the depth, the unrefined joy that nourishes the spirit. Eat not for image, but for gratitude; live not for approval, but for vitality. Remember that the body, like the soul, is not meant to be starved of pleasure, but sustained by balance. For a life without flavor — however clean, however efficient — is no life at all.

So eat, my children, with awareness and with awe. Taste the earth, the fire, and the hands that brought the meal to your table. Rejoice in the richness that sustains you, and beware the false virtue that would strip it away. For as Harrison reminds us, to deny the fat of life is to deny life itself — and the greatest curse of all is not excess, but emptiness.