Why I posted that question about food

[nancylebov]

Yesterday, I asked what, if anything, people would like to have be different about their relationship with food.

The question was inspired by this:

I recently asked a bunch of people what, if anything, they would most like to change about their relationship to food. As expected, since people vary, there was a wide range of responses, all of which were cogent and wonderful.

I guess I had my suspicions about what issues would be most popular. I expected maybe people would want to learn how to stop eating when full? And, yes, that was a pretty popular wish. Or maybe, how to eat nutritiously (or, to use the phrase from Satter’s Hierarchy of Food Needs, “instrumentally”) without driving oneself bonkers? And, yes, that came up too.

But the most popular wish of all, the one that came up most often, was one that wasn’t even really on my radar when I asked the question – despite the fact that it was something I have struggled with myself, and something that was a key lesson I learned when I went through the Learn to Eat process myself several years ago.

You know what it was?

How to eat in front of other people.

By this, people do not, of course, mean how to put food in their mouth with other people present, or what foods they should choose when eating with others, but how to stop feeling so damn self-conscious about eating in public. Or with friends and family. Or with strangers at a party.

That's most of the article, though there's plenty more about self-consciousness around eating in the comments.

There's also a link to her pdf about how to eat, and a description of her services as a nutritionist/counselor to help people calm down about food.

I went ballistic when I read the article-- have people driven each other that crazy?

I've had a little more time to think, and I don't know whether that level of fear is typical, or whether she's likely to know an atypically high proportion of people who are troubled about food.

This has a bit of overlap with the religious questionnaire-- when I was posting about feeling as though I might have had a past life as a crystal because other people knew so much more about how to live with people, I was in tears. At this point, while I'm still a little misty-eyed, I thank the God in which I do not exactly believe that I've spent my life hiding out from normal people if that's what they do to each other.

From a classic essay:

Neurotypical syndrome is a neurobiological disorder characterized by preoccupation with social concerns, delusions of superiority, and obsession with conformity.

Neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is either the only one, or the only correct one. NTs find it difficult to be alone. NTs are often intolerant of seemingly minor differences in others. When in groups NTs are socially and behaviorally rigid, and frequently insist upon the performance of dysfunctional, destructive, and even impossible rituals as a way of maintaining group identity. NTs find it difficult to communicate directly, and have a much higher incidence of lying as compared to persons on the autistic spectrum.

Edited to add: I want to underline that I don't deprecate people who feel self-conscious about the food they eat or buy. I feel as though they've been influenced by a high level of totally inappropriate social pressure.

Comments

[twistedchick]

I wonder if any of the self-consciousness in public is influenced by the difference in eating in front of family as opposed to eating in the presence of strangers, or if it's eating in front of anyone other than 'self. And does this coincide with age, or locality, or anything else?

[nancylebov]

I don't know-- there seems to be all sorts of self-consciousness. This might be worth taking to a venue where it would be possible to get more answers-- maybe metafilter.

[siderea]

I thank the God in which I do not exactly believe that I've spent my life hiding out from normal people if that's what they do to each other.

Amen!

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't answer your original query, but the whole thing about eating in front of people would have been what I said. I assume that if I eat in front of people I don't know they or the waitstaff will view my choices as indicative of being on a diet (because of my celiac limiting choices), bulimia (because of my need for high calorie intake due to celiac disease and my love of junk food), or a reflection of my gender (salad is feminine; steak is masculine). I have had strangers, waitstaff, people on line at the grocery store, all make comments on each of these sorts of things, and it's just HORRIFYING and often embarrassing. I have a pretty good relationship with food (other than the junk food and the annoyance I have about my celiac disease) but I always have to think about this stuff especially when I'm traveling in a way that involves a lot of stranger interaction (cons, business, the cruise).

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your answer.

I'm not up against as much as you are-- I'm fat, but I eat the usual range of things.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

You need to look at those people with a horrified look on your face and ask them "Where were you raised? You don't ask people somthing like that!" and then turn your back on them. They are the ones who should be horrified and embarrassed at their lack of manners.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

Of course, there is also the simpler eyebrow-raise-and-glare, with nothing said at all :)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

A different topic, but it can be surprisingly difficult to get to the point of view that one is entitled to self-defense.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

Which is sad and horrifying, and makes me gladder than ever that my parents taught me that from the get-go.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh, I had NO IDEA I posted this anonymously until a friend just went "wait, was that you?"

Ooops! Hi.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

wow, maybe I shouldn't get you to read Mauss' The Gift, even though it's the book I most often find myself recommending.

Individual people are crazy, but that's just nothing compared with the stuff they do to reproduce society.

And no, I'm generally not a self-conscious eater. Though I find that when I am trying to be on my best behaviour, the eating thing often goes wrong somehow.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Why do you recommend The Gift so highly, and why do you think it might not be a good book for me?

At least gifts=prestige encourages craftsmanship, which more than I can say for food nagging.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Well, it's all about games of one-upmanship: creating exactly the sort of impossible rituals that alarm you. Irecommend it to lots of people partly because I've found it really influences the way I think about lots of social relations/situations, and partly because I think it's "both true and non-trivial," a famously rare thing in the humanities, if the wikipedia article on Ricardo to be believed.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I managed to neatly avoid your question, didn't I? Ok: The Gift looks like a little study of some eccentric Pacific islanders, but what Mauss notices about gift exchange also applies to all kinds of gift economies, including families, organised crime syndicates and ideas of both prestige and fairness. I think Christ stories (including Harry Potter and LoTR) are built on gift-typeexchanges. The critical moving force behind the system of gifts is not prestige but debt. Debt socialises by creating obligations. A really generous, "disinterested" gift is possible, i'm not saying such gifts don't exist, but they get a special social power exactly because their "hanging debt" is left unresolved.

I don't know if that helps, or if it's all even less clear now. If you want more let me know. Right now I'm typing on a phone, so I'm restrained from writing an essay.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I might be interested in more on the subject-- it's rather hard to be certain when I don't know what you're thinking about saying.

Do you have a history for the idea of disinterested giving? Considering that it's something that people almost never do, it's odd that it should be the ideal.

How does the web shape up as a gift economy?

Personally, I try to not treat my lj as putting anyone under obligation (on the other hand, I do somewhat ask people I know if they've read various posts), and on the other, if I didn't get comments that interest me, I don't know that I'd bother.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I think the web supports some kinds of gift economies the same way commuter trains support Pokemon - it creates conditions in which they can flourish. Open source software strikes me as very Maussian, but no more so than, say, Steampunk fan communities. I dislike much of the recent fashionable writing on web gift economies, though, because it tends to assume (a) that these are good things and (b) that somehow prestige must translate into cash in the end, which is very definitely not the point of much of the anthro lit on gifts.

So before I rewrite the book (or even maybe work up my own book, since I guess my ideas have drifted quite a long way from Mauss' by now), I should recommend the wikipedia article on Mauss. The "critics" section offers a bunch of positions that I consider easily refuted, if you consider that one of the main reasons people give gifts is to affect the way they see themselves - that is, a lot of gifts involve imaginary interlocutors, including possibly giving to street beggars: clearly prestige and social position are involved there, but the beggar him/herself is really extraneous to who is being pleased/served/propitiated.

"Disinterested" or "generous" gift giving seems to be valorized in lots and lots of cultures, and my sense is that this is because the nature of the gift as exchange is actively denied in those cultures. The gift would lose its power or value if it were not separated from obviously self-interested economic exchanges such as wages for labour. There's a load of complicated exegesis in various flavours of Christianity all about how Jesus' sacrifice is a "pure gift" and so on, about the pure and generous mercy of God that is more than humanity should expect, which is clearly related (I'd say) to things you find in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry or in Beowulf where the warrior man boasts about how he feeds the whole longhouse with his hunting and no woman or child goes hungry, even those who could not possibly do anything for the warrior himself. The excessive bounty they provide is their value, and I think points to generosity and supposed disinterestedness as cultural values.

2 more complicated examples of excessive gift-giving leading to prestige: the 47 ronin and Roman Charity. In the former case a daimyo's loyal servants deliberately debase themselves, cutting off their social bonds and giving up their social positions, but with the purpose of avenging their master's death. In doing this, of course they lose all regard and prestige, but once the full plot is revealed they become honoured as something like saints. In this case they make a seemingly non-reciprocal gift of their most precious honour which turns out to be reciprocated ultimately. In the latter case the daughter gives up her honour and flouts a whole bunch of body taboos so that she might keep her father alive. The excessiveness of her gesture gets her so much honour, contrary to social convention, that her father is freed because of it.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Great quote! That one's going in the file. Dontcha just hate all them homey "Be yourself!" messages they insert into every bloody morality tale on TV. Hypocrisy makes me gag.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I pretty much don't watch tv, so I can guess what you mean, but not really know. Is there an episode you'd recommend as a good example of the problem?

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Don't have one myself. Only grab a few things like the occasional Daily Show and Dr. Who of course, but after that, what's there to watch really?! It's a cliche' of course, most commonly found in youth flicks. Young people are the most conservative and intolerant bunch around, so I guess hammering the message home endlessly can't be all that bad, or is it? I'd rather see more eccentricity and variety presented as being unremarkable and normal in itself.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

Love the NT quote

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

I wonder about the eating in front of people thing. Maimonides wrote as a piece of advice that a teacher shouldn't eat in front of his students, because in his time eating in public was a difficult activity to conduct with dignity. I also read a really interesting article about socialization in Japanese preschools and the importance of eating lunch together--it's the main lesson little kids are supposed to learn at that age (according to the author, a cultural anthropologist from the US with a kid in preschool in Japan.)

I don't think there's ever been a period when eating didn't have huge meaning, even before the current cultural insanity. It's not just our time and place, though we have our own unique stuff going on here and now.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

I found this rather surprising, because the only times I've ever felt self-conscious at all about eating in front of other people was either because of being around whoever the people were (i.e. wanting to make a good impression) or eating a really fancy dinner where I wasn't entirely certain of what implement to use when. In either case, the nervousness went away pretty quickly. Most of the time, I have no issues with this at all, and find it surprising that it would take up so much mental energy for so many people.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

I think I get kind of a kick out of eating in public, modeling being a dessert-enjoying vegetarian who eats whatever/whenever/wherever she likes.