My Eating Habits

CW: The following piece makes mention of the fixation on food and eating, and vomiting

I have never been fond of conventions. I feel no compulsion to follow the crowd. It’s because I’m quite detached from society. This is often detrimental to my personal relationships: I care about my friends and family, I just don’t care enough to show that I care. Also, I am quite a socially anxious person. I’ll be sitting eating dinner with another person, thinking about what they’re eating. And what they’re thinking about. And what they might think about what I’m eating. So I prefer to eat alone. And the more I eat alone, the more I develop peculiar habits.

Not all of my habits are bad. One thing I sometimes do before a meal is press my hands together, and say itadakimasu. It’s something I picked up working in a Japanese restaurant. It’s an acknowledgement that I am not simply eating - like some kind of savage - but receiving my food, like the sophisticated human being I am. Back then, it was a nice way to break up the intense bouts of dishwashing. The practice brings me to the present moment, helps me remember how lucky I am to be here, eating something good. I try to practice conscious eating, but I often forget, and take food for granted. Many times, I begin eating a meal before I’ve finished preparing it. When I am making a toastie, just as it begins to crisp, I’ll tear off a corner of the sandwich and eat it. I’ll do this to all four corners, without even realising. It leaves the toastie quite deformed. Using itadakimasu gives me a rest from those compulsions. It makes me appreciate the meal’s sacred value.

I have an allergy to gluten. It developed when I was about 16, so until then, gluten played a large part in my life. I’m not celiac, it just makes my stomach feel like a balloon about to pop. And my scalp gets crusty. And my mouth gets all acidic, which sometimes causes my gums to tear. I avoid it most of the time, but so many good meals have at least a little bit of gluten. It’s difficult to resist, and it’s not like I’m going to die, so a little bit here and there doesn’t hurt. The other day I went to a Thai restaurant for lunch and ordered a Pad thai, without checking if it was gluten-free. I hoped they’d use rice noodles which would have been safe. They did, but there must’ve been something else with gluten, and halfway through the meal my jeans were a lot tighter, my stomach stretching. I finished the meal because it was a really good Pad thai, and I don’t like to waste food. But after the meal, I went to the toilet and was sick. Sometimes, if I vomit enough I get off Scot free, and I get to enjoy the meal without the symptoms. Of course, this also means I miss out on the actual nutrients of the meal.

It’s something I inherited from my mother - the gluten allergy I mean, and still eating gluten in spite of it. Not the vomiting, I don’t think. I like foods that offer more than just a pleasant taste. Cheese is my favourite food. I can eat it several times a day. It’s great because you can eat it by itself, but it goes well with other things too. I like to eat cheddar cheese with apples, or with walnuts, and I like to have parmesan with honey. Blue cheese just goes well in some bread, and camembert I eat by itself. The appeal of smelly cheese is of course its distinctive sensory experience. Kind of like chilli. I can’t tolerate loads of spice, but I can tolerate my intolerance. I enjoy spicy foods, they just give my body a hard time - but that’s all part of the experience.

Often in a restaurant, I’ll go for the option with four chilli symbols next to its name. I’ll be confident that with so much practice, I’ll finish the meal with no worries. But each time, I end up red-faced, tears pouring out my eyes, panting like a dog on a day in February. Of course, I finish it - I’m not saying I don’t enjoy all the crying and what-not. In fact, I quite enjoy it all. What’s great about spicy food is that the experience isn’t over once you leave the restaurant. In fact, it isn’t even over when you go to bed. I tend to forget this. It’s only the next morning, around nine9 am, that my body reminds me. I’ll try to make something happen, but there is a fire underneath me, like razor blades sliding across an orifice. Not that that’s a bad thing - as I said, it’s part of the experience for me.

I wouldn’t really call that last one a ‘habit’ per se, more like a frequent happening, or a recurring episode.

I’m afraid that among the habits accrued in my time eating alone, there are many that I’m still unaware of, that I can’t write about. So if anyone wants to eat with me, and take note of my habits, please get in contact and we can arrange something.