L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

It was like a car wreck

March 22, 2009 on 10:00 am | | In Food, General Musing, Music

I couldn’t look away. I’ve been gagging over the photoblog “This is Why You’re Fat” all morning and there seems to be no end to the horrors people are willing to unleash on their gastrointestinal systems

We tend to think that massive quantities of bad food wolfed down on the go is a recent development, but it’s a tradition with a long history. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about it in his book America, historical statistic, and descriptive published in 1841:

The [breakfast] is generally a substantial one, a variety of dishes being placed on the table, and few persons breakfasting without partaking of some description of animal food ; but the rapidity with which it is despatched is its most remarkable feature, the longest time taken by the slowest being never more than 15 minutes, some of the quickest getting through the meal in 5 minutes, andthe average number occupying about 10.

In the busy cities, the reason assigned for this haste is the keen pursuit, of business, and the eager desire to get to the countinghouse or store ; but here, with the entire day before them, and nothing whatever to do, they eat with just the same haste as at other places. The contest for the dishes is a perfect scramble ; the noise and clatter of the waiters and their wares are absolutely deafening ; no one gets precisely what he wants, though every one is searching after something. The quiet elegance of an English breakfast is as great a contrast to the noisy rudeness of an American meal as can well be conceived, even when both are taken in public hotels like these. Elegance of manners in such a scene as this is quite out of the question. People eat as if they were afraid that their plates were about to be snatched from them before they had done ; mastication may be said to be almost entirely omitted ; and in nine cases out of ten, persons do not remain in their chairs to finish the meal, short as it is, but rise with the last mouthful still unswallowed, and dispose of it gradually as they walk along.

… [at dinner] The hurry and bustle of the breakfast scene are again repeated, with little of table enjoyment to reconcile the parties to the heat and noise of the room. The fare is what in England would be called coarse and bad, the dishes few in number, and wretchedly cooked, besides being all lukewarm ; and the miserable sprinkling of bad vegetables being almost as cold as if they had been dressed on the preceding day … The escape from this is almost as rapid as from the breakfast, and 15 minutes may be regarded as the average time occupied
in it ; though a few may sit, perhaps, from 20 to 25 minutes, but none for half an hour.

It may be tradition, but that doesn’t make it right.

Especially not this.

See more like that one:

• Chopping List
• The Magi had it easy...
• Day 15: Which Way to the Egress?
• Day 13: Juice of Affliction, Chili of Salvation
• Day 11: The Wall