Slow Down, It Won't Run Away

I have been known on occasion, well actually usually, to wolf down a plate of food while folks around me are still getting their napkins in their laps and their hands firmly in control of their cutlery.  I won't try to excuse this bad habit, but I would like to talk it through with you if you have a moment.

I haven't always fallen on my food like Ali Baba's thieves on a caravan.  There have been times when food was very dear to me: those years when I was out on  my own after college and a meal a day was a good day for me.  When you haven't much to eat your attention to food and eating can become sacramental: putting that slice of bread covered in PB&J into your mouth is sometimes the holiest moment in a mundane day when you're truly hungry. 

And later, when I had the money to eat well every day, keeping kosher also focused my attention on food and eating because you can't just grab a burger at McDonald's or Tex-Mex at Taco Bueno.  You are often forced to slow down, to make choices of what you will and won't eat, when and where you'll eat, and also recall why you have the food to eat in the first place.

But I no longer have the discipline of kashrut or the lack of funds to keep me focused.  Food is my addiction, and a particularly dangerous one at that.  It isn't policed like alcohol, tobacco, or drugs.  It's readily available - I can even grown my own! And while being overweight carries health risks, as well as social opprobrium in some parts of our nation, I know I can easily pull up to a fast-food restaurant anywhere in America and feed my hunger - even if it isn't a hunger that food can satisfy.  

Which hungers are beyond food's abilities to assuage?  Boredom. Fear. Anger. Depression. Unease. Bad economic news?   Have a donut.  Business issues?  Grab a burger and fries and work through it.  Trying to solve the problem of more debt than income?  Let's have dinner out and talk about it.  And while I agree makers of prepared foods,grocers, and restauranteurs could do a better job with nutrition, I'm the one walking in and buying their products to feed my face and fill the holes in my soul.

So what to do?  Well, my wife has come to my rescue on more than one occasion with this thought, "Slow down, it won't run away."  When I begin to shovel food, "Slow down...."  When I take a larger portion than I need (or really want)  I hear, "Slow down...."  She's right, of course.  The food won't run away...and my eating too fast or too much won't get me away from the concerns that cause me to bolt my food trying to fill up mental or emotional holes.  As a friend remarked recently, "your stomach isn't a street and you aren't on a Street Crew trying to fill the potholes."  Enough said.

Slowing down when I eat lets me taste the food, get some joy and satisfaction out of it, mellows my mood and makes me a more pleasant dinner guest.  Slowing down also treats my soul, my body, and my food with greater respect.  Finally, what is better than spending time at a meal with friends, food, and conversation?  And when I have rushed through meals, how many of those moments have I unwittingly lost forever?

So having talked this over with you, I see why slow is the best way to go when I eat...thanks for listening.