P5 Hortwiz “Eating at the Edge”

Citing a real case of a hungry student that eating a sandwich in his seminar, Horwitz point out the nowadays shift of eating habits, which from traditional face-to-face eating to a more private manner. In his article, “eating at the edge” presents an occasion that food is not severed at a situation which they are definitive, but which they were additive. In other word, it means that people no longer eat at where and when they were supposed to, from a conventional perspective, and several cases and examples were used to justify his assertion.

In the first place, he compared the calorie people get from snacks and formal meals. The decreasing calorie consumed from real meal and increasing calorie from snack prove us with the fact that contemporary eating habits are simply an easy-breezy form of multitasking; rather than have formal dinner at a regular time line, people prefer to eat anywhere and anytime they want. Then Horwitz mentioned how “soup at hand” and “TV dinner” free people from traditional meal table to have dinner when driving or watching TV. Such situation which Horwitz referred as “Eating in Timeless Time”, for modern America’s mind, “create an oasis of privacy, an escape and retreat from the pace and crowd of city life.”

The NASA cases help to explain how background and culture differs people’s eating tendency. Unlike American crew, who are content to eat ‘on the run’ and by themselves, many European crew members, noted by Horwitz, prefer eating a complete meal as a group. They enjoy spending their meal time and sharing food with each other, and regarding it a an way to encourage efficient co-working.

Based on my own experience, I really enjoy the freedom and privacy such modern eating habits grant for me. It’s fine and exciting for me to enjoy a formal meal and have fun with several friends or family during the holiday, but it could be really time consuming by having such kind of meal every day. Also, different dinning preference could also bring lots of conflict when having meals socially.   In such a rush world, people has his own schedule and focusing, and more burden then years ago. When facing heavy studying burdens, sitting in the library for whole day and supplying energy by snacks is the most common situation for me.