Volume 13
The Sound of One Man Eating
By Michael Lukas
Indeed, if the truth is to be told, what I eat in my corner without form or fuss has much more relish for
me, even though it be bread and onions, than the turkeys of those other tables where I am forced to
chew slowly, drink little, wipe my mouth every minute, and cannot sneeze or cough if I want or do
other things that are the privileges of liberty and solitude. -Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote
As a chubby, but still always very hungry child, I was constantly being told to eat slower. Because, said my
parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles: 1) I would choke on something, like my cousin Sarah had, and
maybe I wouldn't be as lucky as she was to have a doctor around; and 2) I would actually enjoy my food
more if I slowed down and savored it. (They always used that word, savor, pronounced as if it were in
italics). I never was able to slow down. Up until a few years ago, I still thought of eating slow as a difficult but
ultimately rewarding goal, like exercising regularly or drinking eight glasses of water a day.
This isn't the appropriate venue (nor am I the appropriate author) to discuss the medical ramifications of
eating quickly. But in an attempt to spackle over this gaping hole in my argument, I should say that I have
never heard nor read a solid medical argument against eating fast. And besides the semi-apocryphal story
about my cousin Sarah choking on a fish bone, I have neither heard nor read of anyone being injured or
otherwise adversely affected by the speed of their eating. As far as I know, the whole medical argument
against eating fast is, if you will excuse the term, an old wives' tale.
Anyway. To me the real issue at hand is not the relative danger of eating quickly. (If I am meant to leave this
world with a piece of lamb lodged in my throat, so be it.) The question is whether eating slowly is more
enjoyable than eating quickly. To begin, let us first consider the argument in favor of eating slowly.
The most visible and vocal institutional proponent of eating slowly is the Slow Food movement, an
international organization devoted, in the words of Slow Food San Francisco's Web site, to "protect[ing] the
pleasures of the table from homogenization of modern fast food and life." Founded in 1986, in an
(undoubtedly picturesque) Italian village called Bra, Slow Food International spends most of its energy
conferring and declaring, using phrases like "taste education," "the convivial traditions of the table," and "the
diversity of the earth's bounty." The Slow Food manifesto, which is actually a pretty good read-right up there
with the Palestinian Declaration of Independence and the speeches of Tony Kushner in terms of its
impassioned yet controlled rhetoric-states: "We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same
insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat
Fast Foods. To be worthy of the name, Homo Sapiens should rid himself (sic) of speed."
Although there's nothing in the Slow Food literature that specifically says you should eat slowly, I assume it's
a truth they hold to be self-evident. (Just as opponents of gay marriage don't specifically say they think
homosexuality is a bad thing, but one can probably assume they do.) One gets the idea that these Slow
Fooders are the kind of people who really savor their food. One also gets the idea that they are the kind of
people who think those who don't savor their food are somewhat brutish. This picture comes from passages
like the following, taken from an essay on Slowfood.com called "In Praise of Slowness": "[The snail (their
symbol)] is like a sort of amulet against exasperation, against the malpractice of those who are too impatient
to feel and taste, too greedy to remember what they had (sic) just devoured."
Now, I'll be the first person to stand up in support of the convivial traditions of the table or the diversity of the
earth's bounty, and there's no question that I'd rather eat a fig-fed ham and artisanal goat cheese sandwich
than a Big Mac. But "the malpractice of those who are … too greedy to remember what they just devoured"?
What? If you enjoy self-reflexive mastication, more power to you. But don't tell me I'm enjoying my food less
because I eat quickly. You're not my mom, Slow Food International. And even if you were, I'm a grown-ass
man. I can eat how I want.
I've tried eating slowly: chewing each bite 20 times; setting minimum time limits on my meals; eating with small
silverware to decrease the size of my bites. But every time I try eating slowly, I end up thinking about my
food more than experiencing it. And for me mealtime shouldn't be a meta-gustatory experience. It is, in fact,
one of the few times of the day that I stop thinking and abandon myself to my senses.
During my sophomore year of college, I took a Religious Studies class called Japanese Buddhism in
Historical Perspective, in which we learned about the history of Buddhism in Japan, the different sects, and a
number of the more famous Japanese Buddhist monks. By far the coolest of these monks was an iconoclastic
rebel who, after weeks of silent meditation, would go out on drunken, orgiastic binges in the city. His
rationalization for his behavior was that he was less attached to his self during these binges than during
meditation.
The point is: you can be reverent without being conscious of being reverent. Or, as Henry James wrote, "True
happiness consists of getting outside oneself." That, to me, is the pleasure of eating. What do you think about
that, Alice Waters?
The Sound of One Man Eating
By Michael Lukas
Indeed, if the truth is to be told, what I eat in my corner without form or fuss has much more relish for
me, even though it be bread and onions, than the turkeys of those other tables where I am forced to
chew slowly, drink little, wipe my mouth every minute, and cannot sneeze or cough if I want or do
other things that are the privileges of liberty and solitude. -Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote
As a chubby, but still always very hungry child, I was constantly being told to eat slower. Because, said my
parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles: 1) I would choke on something, like my cousin Sarah had, and
maybe I wouldn't be as lucky as she was to have a doctor around; and 2) I would actually enjoy my food
more if I slowed down and savored it. (They always used that word, savor, pronounced as if it were in
italics). I never was able to slow down. Up until a few years ago, I still thought of eating slow as a difficult but
ultimately rewarding goal, like exercising regularly or drinking eight glasses of water a day.
This isn't the appropriate venue (nor am I the appropriate author) to discuss the medical ramifications of
eating quickly. But in an attempt to spackle over this gaping hole in my argument, I should say that I have
never heard nor read a solid medical argument against eating fast. And besides the semi-apocryphal story
about my cousin Sarah choking on a fish bone, I have neither heard nor read of anyone being injured or
otherwise adversely affected by the speed of their eating. As far as I know, the whole medical argument
against eating fast is, if you will excuse the term, an old wives' tale.
Anyway. To me the real issue at hand is not the relative danger of eating quickly. (If I am meant to leave this
world with a piece of lamb lodged in my throat, so be it.) The question is whether eating slowly is more
enjoyable than eating quickly. To begin, let us first consider the argument in favor of eating slowly.
The most visible and vocal institutional proponent of eating slowly is the Slow Food movement, an
international organization devoted, in the words of Slow Food San Francisco's Web site, to "protect[ing] the
pleasures of the table from homogenization of modern fast food and life." Founded in 1986, in an
(undoubtedly picturesque) Italian village called Bra, Slow Food International spends most of its energy
conferring and declaring, using phrases like "taste education," "the convivial traditions of the table," and "the
diversity of the earth's bounty." The Slow Food manifesto, which is actually a pretty good read-right up there
with the Palestinian Declaration of Independence and the speeches of Tony Kushner in terms of its
impassioned yet controlled rhetoric-states: "We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same
insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat
Fast Foods. To be worthy of the name, Homo Sapiens should rid himself (sic) of speed."
Although there's nothing in the Slow Food literature that specifically says you should eat slowly, I assume it's
a truth they hold to be self-evident. (Just as opponents of gay marriage don't specifically say they think
homosexuality is a bad thing, but one can probably assume they do.) One gets the idea that these Slow
Fooders are the kind of people who really savor their food. One also gets the idea that they are the kind of
people who think those who don't savor their food are somewhat brutish. This picture comes from passages
like the following, taken from an essay on Slowfood.com called "In Praise of Slowness": "[The snail (their
symbol)] is like a sort of amulet against exasperation, against the malpractice of those who are too impatient
to feel and taste, too greedy to remember what they had (sic) just devoured."
Now, I'll be the first person to stand up in support of the convivial traditions of the table or the diversity of the
earth's bounty, and there's no question that I'd rather eat a fig-fed ham and artisanal goat cheese sandwich
than a Big Mac. But "the malpractice of those who are … too greedy to remember what they just devoured"?
What? If you enjoy self-reflexive mastication, more power to you. But don't tell me I'm enjoying my food less
because I eat quickly. You're not my mom, Slow Food International. And even if you were, I'm a grown-ass
man. I can eat how I want.
I've tried eating slowly: chewing each bite 20 times; setting minimum time limits on my meals; eating with small
silverware to decrease the size of my bites. But every time I try eating slowly, I end up thinking about my
food more than experiencing it. And for me mealtime shouldn't be a meta-gustatory experience. It is, in fact,
one of the few times of the day that I stop thinking and abandon myself to my senses.
During my sophomore year of college, I took a Religious Studies class called Japanese Buddhism in
Historical Perspective, in which we learned about the history of Buddhism in Japan, the different sects, and a
number of the more famous Japanese Buddhist monks. By far the coolest of these monks was an iconoclastic
rebel who, after weeks of silent meditation, would go out on drunken, orgiastic binges in the city. His
rationalization for his behavior was that he was less attached to his self during these binges than during
meditation.
The point is: you can be reverent without being conscious of being reverent. Or, as Henry James wrote, "True
happiness consists of getting outside oneself." That, to me, is the pleasure of eating. What do you think about
that, Alice Waters?