I know it’s the gentlefolk way to take a bite of this and a bite of that, and, to get all Victorian on your ass, to leave a portion uneaten on the plate, as well as to scoop soup away from oneself and only butter a torn bit of bread as one eats it, and chat with the person on ones left during one course then the person on ones right over the next course, etc., etc.
But I remember a letter to Dear Abby where the writer was commended as a boy for eating one thing at a time as an indication that he’d grow to be a man who finishes each task he’s given.
Do you do this? If so, do you eat the items in order of favorites? Have you been called out on it? Do you take it as far as disassembling your sandwiches and savoring the individual tastes of each ingredient?
I’ve never met or seen such a person, but I heard they are called Isolationists. It’s said they have a keen eye for detail, but I’m not sure why that would necessarily follow.
However, I have met someone who suffered from Brumotactillophobia, which is the fear of different foods touching each other on a plate. I don’t think she necessarily eats them one at a time though.
I would watch her carefully separate the foods on her plate so they never touched each other, although I used to remind her that the foods do touch each other in her stomach. I just considered it an odd quirk.
I have, but only one. And only some of the time. He would often (but not always) eat all of one thing off his plate before preceding to the next. So if it was say some standard Turkey plate with a vegetable, dressing, mashed potatoes and turkey, he would usually finish each one in turn before moving on to the next.
However his most interesting culinary habit to me was how he ate a simple hamburger. Top bun 1rst, meat 2nd, bottom bun third. I found it both perplexing and fascinating .
I do. I usually eat the meat course first, then the potatoes, and finally the vegetables. I eat sandwiches the “normal” way, though, which is a bite with both slices of bread and everything in between.
I’ve heard it called “clock eating” since you work your way around the plate.
I usually eat this way and I’m not sure what, if anything, it says about me. I don’t care at all about foods touching each other, I just tend to eat one item at a time. I think I just enjoy distinct flavors.
I do so rarely, and only when there’s something I either really like or really dislike. If it’s something I don’t like I’ll eat it first to get it out of the way. If it’s something I really like I’ll save it for last.
I had a friend in college who would not touch any beverages until all his food was gone. He explained that at his house, his family would not even put the beverages on their table until the food was eaten - then they’d go get whatever they were thirsty for.
To simplify his trip through the cafeteria, he would get his drinks (3 milks, and 2 colas, every day) at the same time as his food, but not touch them
I can’t remember if he ate his food in any particular order, though.
Reverse order, sure. I like my last bites to be the best ones. For things like sandwiches, I try to arrange things so that my last bite has the optimal ratio of ingredients, and is larger than average.
My eldest brother was an ‘eat one thing all the way first then move to the next’ type eater, but he didn’t care about stuff touching each other. He also accepted mixed foods as being a singular thing, as in, if a meal included something like a stew or a pasta/vegetable salad, he would treat that as a single ‘item’ and not, say, eat all the vegetable chunks out of his potato salad and then the potatoes.
Actually, the only food I ever saw him ‘deconstruct’ was Italian subs. He loved them, and would get them with all the available add-ons. But then he would scrape all the lettuce/tomato/pickle/onion/whatever stuff off the sandwich onto the wrapping paper. He’d eat the roll/meat/cheese as a single item, then eat mound of ex-toppings as a second item after that.
The rest of us thought that weird, but, oh, well. It was HIS sandwich and HIS taste buds involved, so why not have it HIS way?
I do least favorite to most favorite, but with a ratio type thing. So, if one food is “twice as good” as another it will be two bites of the least favorite for every one bite of the better one.
I often ate one thing at a time when I was a kid, and it drove my Dad up the wall. When he gave me that “it’s all together in your stomach” bit, I pointed out that food that comes back up from your stomach is puke. I don’t remember him getting mad at me for that.
I don’t particularly restrict myself to eating one thing at a time, but I tend to eat the hot foods first because I like my hot food hot. And if there are hot foods that cool off faster than other hot foods (e.g a lot of meat cools off faster than a lot of cooked vegetables) I will eat the faster-cooling one first on the theory that the slower-cooling food will still be pretty hot when I get to it. Also some hot foods are okay when they are not completely hot, but others are not. These are the criteria I use for these decisions.
I don’t know why a person eating one thing at a time should bother anyone. What a puny little thing to get your knickers in a twist about; or as my grandpa used to say, don’t sweat the small stuff.
When I was in elementary school, there was an elderly woman whose entire job seemed to be micromanaging how the kids ate lunch. I don’t know if she went so far as to insist we finish each item before moving on to the next, but she would pounce on you if you dared take a bite of dessert or junk food before you’d finished your entree and vegetables. I remember reading a scene in a book, possibly in the Ramona Quimby series, in which the main character decided to eat one bite of each thing in her lunch in rotation, including her cupcake, and being amazed at the freedom she had.
Now that I’m grown and more mature, I’ve learned that life is short, so I always finish my dessert first.
I always save the best for last. If I’m eating a fast-food burger, I eat the pickle first, then the lettuce, then the tomato, then eat the burger around the edge, and finish with the burger’s center.
I grew up in an era where children were expected to “clean up their plates” or they were not allowed to leave the table. As a typical child, I disliked cooked vegetables the most. So in order to “comply” I trained myself to eat the vegetables first then the potatoes and then the meat. I liked the meat the most so if I saved it for last, I knew I could “finish”.
Today of course, few care about wasted food but I’ve more or less maintained the same eating habit of “veggies first” (although I like veggies a lot more than I did as a child)
It’s my habit to eat one item at a time, but I don’t feel like there’s any particular reason behind it. I honestly didn’t even notice it until high school when my friends noticed I would always eat one item at a time. They’d give me something of a hard time about it but I didn’t really care.
I’ve always been a “one thing at a time” eater, and never realized it until I was in high school and we were out of town and having breakfast at a diner. The waitress asked if anything was wrong with my omelet, because I hadn’t touched it, and I replied, “No, I just haven’t gotten to it yet.” I was still working on the pancakes, IIRC.
To this day, I usually eat the vegetables first, then the starch, and then the protein.
I hadn’t thought about the woman in my college dorm cafeteria who did something comparable for decades, but yeah, she would tell men in line that they couldn’t have, for instance, cake AND fruit, because they were both desserts, and they could only have one dessert. But only the men; she never criticized women for their food choices.
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