Eating At The Edge

Horwitz’s article centered on the idea of how meals, the position of food in our lives, and the food itself has changed over the last 50 years or so. “Eating at the edge” is a termed he apparently coined, and he describes it as  “…occasions when food is an additive to a situation…rather than being definitive.” Eating is no longer something that we do on its own, but it is something that we do with our hands while our mind or body might be otherwise occupied, much like a cigarette in our hand while we are in a lecture hall, an example he cited in his own experience as a student and professor.

People are eating smaller portions more frequently, and this has come to mean that portable, quick foods eaten in this manner are less substantial and more artificial than a large prepared meal eaten less frequently throughout the day. Two examples that he used that I thought were very weighty in both the past and present were Swanson’s TV dinners and Campbell’s Soup at Hand. Swanson’s idea came after Thanksgiving when there was a surplus of leftover Turkeys. Thanksgiving dinner is the most widely recognized, organized meal in most American minds, and he takes this and turns it into a single meal that we pull out of the freezer and eat in little more than the time it takes to walk it from the freezer to the microwave. With the dinner, even TV is more convenient to our schedule with the advent of DVR. Nothing is sacred to the time-cutthroat consumer these days. Another example was Campbell’s Soup at Hand. Soup takes time to properly prepare; the stewing of flavors usually takes hours to properly blend all the ingredients. Now, soup is ready made and packed into a Styrofoam cup to be (again) microwaved and transported in its own cup with a mouth spout, no spoon required! Food is barely eaten anymore, maybe eventually we will just toss little freeze-dried globs of food at our faces and hope we hit our mouths!

Horwitz seems to think this is an American problem, predominantly. NASA and the international space stations are the next subject of his analysis. American astronauts are more inclined to eat on their own while they are doing other work. Other European astronauts like to eat in each other’s company, sacrificing productivity for the company of their only other companions for miles! There are even paid positions in the US that make sure the Americans get along with their European counterparts way up in space.

I have noticed many of these same things as Horwitz has. I consider myself to be a very organized, regimental person. I love sitting down to eat in a generally standard time as it pertains to classes. 11: 30 to 12 for lunch, 5:30 to 6 for dinner. Breakfast is different since I have rowing practice from 6-7: 30 every morning, and I usually eat a number of protein and calorie heavy snacks while I do last minute homework. But with this exception, I try to have as balanced of meals when they fit into my schedule best, and I hate eating on the go. I don’t even like to go to the drive through. I am an old man, and I embrace that quality about myself, and I like eating three well-rounded meals whenever I can! I think I end up eating healthier that way as well, which obviously is very subjective and varies depending on the food itself, but it makes me feel better after I’ve eaten. Company doesn’t matter quite as much, but every good meal is made exponentially better with friends. I think our insistence on convenience for food says a little about our relationships as well, let’s just hope we care about the quality of our friends a little more than the quality of the processed food we eat on the go!