Eating - Food for Thought?

I was brought up in much simpler times. There were 3 meals a day & not a lot of choice. That was partly because the vast range of foods we have today simply wasn't available, but also because most people I knew were on quite limited incomes.

Most of my childhood & adolescence I had family meals & school dinners sitting at a table, where you ate everything put in front of you. You definitely didn't get pudding if you didn't eat your main meal, which was generally meat & two veg, (boiled). Either monitors, teachers or parents supervised behaviour. Sweets were a treat, as was fruit, (mostly it was tinned). Meal times were fairly sedate. There was conversation, but you were expected to sit & be polite.

Nowadays it couldn't be more different. Children are literally spoiled for choice. A worrying number of people have a very disfunctional relationship with food & family meals at a table seem a distant memory.

When I usher at the theatre we have to clear the rubbish after the performance ends. I am frankly appalled at how much packaging & food is simply thrown on the floor & left. Drinks & ice cream are spilled on the newly refurbished carpet & seats. I simply don't understand why the public seems to be unable to last for an hour or less until the interval without drinks & food. People even go out of the auditorium mid performance to buy a drink or something to eat, admittedly mostly in Panto performances. Do they not eat a meal before they come to the theatre?  It seems so rude to me to interrupt the performers & the audience.

We seem to have developed a really bad habit of constant snacking. People walk along the street eating & drinking. Usually that means highly salted or sugary foods, which have caused the current health problems which threaten the very existance of the NHS. I can remember a time when a coffee in a cafe was a real treat, not any more. It's become so important to our lives that we even post on Facebook when we are in Starbucks or Costa - Why should anyone be interested in that???  

It's ironic that now we know so much more about good nutrition & our bodies we eat & drink more bad processed food than ever before. From my perspective change hasn't been for the better.

Having largely stopped smoking ourselves to death we now seem to be hell bent on eating & drinking ourselves to death.