Fast and methodical. My whole family is like a culinary SWOT team - restaurants love us, I’m sure, since we’ll be cleared of a table in under an hour at dinner. I need to work on eating more slowly. It’s almost as if there is a residual anxiety that I have not completed my task if there is still food in front of me.
Too many years of short school/work lunches, so shovel it in is the way I go, except hot soup. I’ve learned sucking down ice cream from my mom, and no, we don’t get ice cream headaches.
Yep, last one usaually to finish at the table. Chew chew chew, it always seemed like common sense since a kid to do that; less stress on the digestive system, better absorbed. Why, yes, I do tend to the perfectionist side, right-o !
This almost exactly. Except instead of “conscription” it was getting my current job. You get a 20 minute break of which 5 minutes is usually over by the time you are relieved get your food and go sit down to eat it. If you TEAR through your food you might be lucky enough to have 2-3 minutes at the end to clean up and hit the restroom leaving you 12 minutes to eat dinner.
I blame my dorm in college, until then I ate at normal speeds. But there, if you ate fast enough you might be able to cajole seconds, and if you ate too slowly one of your tablemates would grab your dessert and say “you’renothavingthisareyou?” at a time when you had both your mouth and your hands busy, and by the time you tried to do anything about it she would already have eaten half of it.
I eat neatly and masticate properly, but real, real fast.
I eat at an easy pace, even though I spent many years in boarding school where the generally accepted rate was as fast as humanly possible.
When I out with my husband, I usually order one course, and he has an appetizer, a main course, salad, cheese, bread, dessert, after dinner drink. By the time he finishes, I’m almost finished my one plate, so we’re sort of in synch. I ask the waitstaff to serve my main course at the same time as his appetizer.
He has stomach problems, I don’t.
I actually chew my food before I swallow it. So it takes me a long time to get through a meal (relative to my girlfriend, who bolts it all down faster than the eye can see). I went with “Victorian lady.”
Both my girlfriend and an old best friend years ago gave me the same reason for why they bolt it down like they’re in a race: They were only allowed a short lunch time at their jobs. Well, my girlfriend’s job with the short lunchtime ended years ago, and she still bolts it down fast when we’re dining out at a fine restaurant. Habits are hard to break, aren’t they?
My relationship with food is the Mediterranean aesthetic that food is a sensuous pleasure to be savored. A long, leisurely dinner of good food is a perfect way to spend quality time with loved ones. It calls for well-prepared, delicious food because I like to take my time to actually taste all its flavors and appreciate them. This runs counter to the clock-bound profit-driven standards of America, where food is a preformed mass-produced lump to be swallowed all at once. It has no taste, so no time is wasted savoring the flavor. I can just picture one of those 1920s “scientific management” researchers in a white coat with a stopwatch, determining that workers need only 9 minutes and 23 seconds to consume a standard nutrition lump.
Same here: alone, I inhale the food; with your wife**, much slower.
** “your wife” = “any other person or people”
I don’t eat as fast as I used to, but it’s a rare day that I’m not the first person finished. I could finish a meal in under 5 minutes when I went through Basic (I managed to have time for seconds at least once a week). These days, I can still finish my lunch in less than 10 minutes. I can, and will, slow down to enjoy a meal when it’s worth it, it’s just that lunch at work is never worth it.
Growing up, I think, the way I got seconds was to clean my plate before my father cleaned his.
I’m a slob, which is certainly familial in nature. I can manage to get something on me, somewhere, without regard to food or speed. The tales of me and food are legend amongst my friends.
I eat a little slower than normal, for the most part. I like to enjoy my food, especially if I’m eating an expensive meal.
Eating with a group of ‘quick-eaters’ is what really spoils it. In those cases I’m usually the last one eating, and then I get a feeling of urgency while everyone waits and is staring at me. The worst sign is when the table goes silent. Most of these ‘quick-eaters’ seem to have one thing on their mind - get full and get out - which usually results in a very light or boring table conversation and turns out to be just another meaningless gathering.
I enjoy eating with others as the conversations are often more honest than usual - similar to that conversations held between smokers on a smoke break - but I always try to avoid becoming part of these ‘get full and get out’ meal gatherings. If I’m going to spend $50+ on a meal I want to enjoy the food and have a memorable experience together. If I wanted cheap, fast food, I’d go to Taco Bell or something.
Slow, especially if there are other people eating with me to talk to.
It’s good though, especially at restaurants. It gives me time to realize when I’m actually full, as opposed to eating a whole restuarant portion, which would make me feel like utter crap if I ate fast enough to finish it.
Ravenous dog here. Even that might be giving me too much credit. My brother is definitely a black hole.
I blame my parents. We’d go out to eat and you had to finish all the icky stuff before you could eat the good stuff. Therefore, you eat the icky stuff fast so you can get to the good stuff. Then you eat the good stuff fast because you want it all; you know only have so long before the parents want to move on to other things.
Its a wonder I’m not huge because I can eat a whole lotta food in a short amount of time. I have to limit myself on things I really like because you bet I can eat that entire pizza, all those potatoes, several of those pork chops, etc.
Anyway, so today I tried to have my dinner slowly. I chew slowly, made every bite count, feel the texture of the meat, savor the favors of the sauce, and all that.
20 minutes.
How do some people ever take an hour to eat? Please teach me!
I’m not sure how to measure it.
I usually have small portions, and everyone else, even those who have larger portions, tend to finish before me. But I don’t think I’m a slow eater; I don’t savour my food and thrill in its delicate flavours, or anything weird like that. So I guess it evens out and I’m average.
But then, if I didn’t have to, I probably wouldn’t eat food at all.