You slip into the break room, furtively drizzle vinaigrette onto your spinach salad, and try to scuttle back to your desk unnoticed. But you and your healthy meal are spotted, and The Chorus begins: “A salad for lunch – you’re so good!”
“I wish I had the time to fix a salad, but by the time I get all the kids out the door, I’m lucky if I remember change for the vending machine.”
“You make me feel so guilty.”
The confessions are enough to make you think the police should eat salads while interrogating suspects. “I … I killed him, detective. And I ate a processed snack high in trans fats afterward. Oh, God, I’m scum!” You wonder what you can do to persuade your colleagues that you are not eating a salad at them.
Chances are, if you’ve ever brought a veggie wrap and V8 for lunch or declined doughnuts at a morning meeting, you’ve heard The Chorus. You’ve probably also met The Soloist – the Healthy Eater, whether of the locavore or South Beach variety, who can’t stop crowing about the superiority of her diet and insisting that with just a little effort, you, too, could exist on her rarefied nutritional plane.
Why does this happen? Why do we judge each other’s food choices or react defensively against the anticipated judgment of people who don’t eat exactly as we do?
Because eating is never merely a biological function. Members of omnivorous species (such as humans, rats, and monkeys) rely on social learning more than instinct to determine what is good to eat. Rats are more likely to try a novel food if they’ve smelled it on the breath of another rat. All a rat is trying to do is not get itself poisoned, but when humans apply social learning to eating, we also factor our penchant for Us-vs.-Them thinking into the equation.
Like language and religion, diets both unite and divide us. There is no more basic show of good will and unity than breaking bread with another person. At the same time, we use food to set ourselves apart. That’s why so many insults are based on another group’s perceived eating preferences – slurs such as “dog eater” and “mackerel snapper,” as well as ideological jabs like “latte liberal” and “Joe Six-Pack.”
The United States has long had a remarkably diverse food culture, reflecting both our immigrant heritage and the ingenuity of marketers. Over the past few decades, we have also been bombarded with information about the nutritional, economic, and environmental effects of the food we eat. A 1950s housewife worried only about her budget and what her family liked, but today’s meal planner is expected to account for everything from cholesterol content to sustainable-fishing practices.
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