P5: Eating on the Edge

In Jamie Horwitz’s “Eating on the Edge”, she develops an argument that it is becoming more frequent that, “food is an additive to a situation…rather than being definitive”. She uses many examples to explain why this has become the social norm. She starts by using an example from her own life; she talks about a student who is eating a messy sandwich in her class and thinks about it like students smoking cigarettes in class during her time. Smoking cigarettes was something you would do in conjunction with another activity, and eating has become something that we use in a similar way.

                She also talks about the ways in which recent innovations have created new ways for food to be eaten at our convenience, but this also makes eating happen more often by oneself. She uses the example of Campbell’s Soup at Hand to develop this point; it has created a perfect way for soup to become something to take with you by being able to be heated quickly and fit conveniently into your cup holder. She also talks about the T.V. dinner which made food more convenient, and it also made our dinners an additive to watching television.

                An example of this phenomenon in my life is the way that I order food that I didn’t prepare, and I eat it while doing things like watching a movie. For example, this weekend I did not have the desire to cook anything or go and get something, so I decided to order a pizza. Once I got the pizza I decided to watch a movie with it. While watching this movie, I was eating pizza nearly the entire time. It had become an additive to the movie rather than a meal that has been set apart to eat with people.