A Very Particular Eater

~ This article first appeared in The Leader Vindicator Newspaper. ~

I do not like when different food items on my plate touch each other.  The quirk traces back to my childhood, when careful mealtime segregation was a wellspring of entertainment for my Uncle Barry.  He would watch with bemused fascination as I organized my food, and then roar with laughter as I ate each item separately.  For my sixteenth birthday he bought me a 1,000 pack of compartmented food trays.  I still have a few.

My particularness at the dinner table should not be confused with pickiness.  A picky person refuses to eat most food items in favor of a familiar few.  Conversely, I enjoy a wide array of foods and frequently take the opportunity to try new things.

As I matured, my separated food preference grew up, too:  I enjoy a strong partiality for foods that taste just as they are.

I like to deconstruct my meals.  On the occasions that I’m dining alone at home, I consume foods in a circular pattern, one ingredient at a time, without sitting at a table.  Instead of mixing a salad, I’ll select each vegetable I want and eat them separately.  I’ll eat a plain steak sometime after the ‘salad’.  Sometimes I’ll have a bite of rice or a sweet potato after the steak, and I almost always have some kind of fruit.  Then I start to balance the whole meal by going back through my lineup of foods and consuming more of what I feel like eating.  This way, I can pinpoint my exact cravings and better satiate myself.  For example, instead of eating more salad, I might specifically want more cauliflower and more snap peas, but no green pepper or spinach.  (This meal routine isn’t as complicated as it sounds; I rove around the kitchen and eat what I’m craving.)

I’ve noticed my eating patterns shift away from traditional breakfast-lunch-dinner.  It is a surprise to me how much my preferences vary from meal to meal; sometimes I devour the steak and barely touch the vegetables.  Sometimes I leave a lot of steak for leftovers and consume tremendous quantities of crunchy vegetables.  I’ve skipped meals because I didn’t feel like eating and I’ve stopped in the middle of fairly important workdays to consume everything in the refrigerator to stave off starvation.  Instead of eating on a timeline, I wait until I feel what I need, and then I eat it.

This oddity has, in a way, saved me. 

In his book The Dorito Effect, Mark Schatzker reveals the flavor industry’s effect on eating habits.  By studying what combinations of fats and chemicals yield powerful craving responses in peoples’ brains, flavor companies have managed to sway preferences away from real foods in favor of the high-powered kick of their products, which are added to nearly everything.  People who consume foods indiscriminately are more likely to unknowingly pick up an addiction to artificial flavors, because the flavor enhancements can be easily hidden in a mix of ingredients versus one ingredient.

Flavorings have eroded enjoyment of real food by desensitizing palates.  They have also undermined natural satiation triggers that tell us when to stop eating.  A single raw ingredient tastes bland compared to the fast-acting chemicals hidden in a prepared mixture.  This is why it is so common to find food served with flavor accompaniments, e.g. a vegetable tray with premixed dip at the center or a sliced fruit arrangement with sweetener sprinkled over the wedges.  Dip is served because people don’t enjoy the actual food item.  Whole generations have been grafted onto the pop of synthetic flavor instead of the nutritional complexity of real flavor, and once converted they can’t stop eating.  Exceeding nutritional needs by overeating is just as wasteful as tossing a full plate into the trash.

If we’re not mindful about food choices, then what we taste will not coincide with nutrition.  Most food that is served falls into this category.  Humans, considered (by ourselves) to be leaders in intelligence among the species, eat tasty food that is very bad for our health.  Today doctors have begun treating their first child patients for fatty liver disease.  The population as a whole isn’t exactly healthy; we’re teetering on the edge of sanity while juggling a plethora of chronic conditions, nearly all of which can be traced back to horrendous diet.  It’s time to get particular about food.

Nutrition isn’t as straight forward as a diet plan.  A plan locks us into a routine of food; nutrition is dynamic according to specific daily needs.  It is better to experience a slight nutritional deficit and repair it through diet than it is to constantly take maintenance doses of supplements, which erode desire for food and reduce exposure to variety.  The only way to ‘tune in’ to food feedback is to eliminate interference from confusing additives.  You know you’ve eliminated interference when you mindfully separate ingredients instead of indiscriminately ingesting whatever comes your way. 

Here’s my tip: Make mealtime an opportunity to discover what food actually tastes like, and then deliberately avoid anything that might get in the way of that goal. Remember, if food has a label, that’s your warning.