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Posted at 12:02PM, 17 September 2008 by Stuart Walton - Food and wine writer

Feeling peckish? Don't worry, so's everybody else. A little-noticed factor in the obesity epidemic, and one which is even more of an influence on body mass than what people eat, is the fact that they're eating all the time. At some stage in the recent past, presumably when Mum wasn't looking, we all started raiding life's cookie jar, and now we can't stop.

Eating is going on all around us, all the time. In the days when public decorum was more restrictive, eating was confined to particular times of the day. If you felt nibbly at around 11 in the morning, or three in the afternoon, you just put up with it - at least until the next tea-break. What happens far more now is that people eat something. They graze. They snack. They have something to 'put them on' until the next tea-break, when they eat something else.

It is a rule of all train travel now that people have to start eating something as soon as they get settled into a seat

It is a rule of all train travel now that people have to start eating something as soon as they get settled into a seat. If you haven't equipped yourself with a foot-long baguette, to be eaten from the bag at laborious length, don't panic. There will be a trolley along shortly, with a selection of snacks and refreshments to ward off the debilitating effects of calorie shortage.

We have all sat in front of people at the cinema who choose the crunchiest sweets in the crackliest wrapping to get them through the two-hour stretch ahead of them. These people follow me around Brighton actually, not only crunching and crackling their way through every film I go to see, but sitting behind me on the bus and standing behind me in the bank queue. It won't be long before I find they're sitting next to me on the settee at home when I switch on EastEnders.

If it is illegal to use a mobile phone while driving, why isn't it illegal to be chomping on a Mars bar? And what about those people who eat on the phone? How annoying is that? Please, scoff your banana first. I'll wait.

Some of the bus companies, and most cab firms, have 'No Eating' rules, but on the buses at least, there's nobody to enforce them. Eaters can render any rules unworkable anyway, by smuggling chips, cheeseburgers, lightly grilled steaks in black pepper sauce with steamed broccoli on the side, anywhere they want to eat them because, as we know, it would be an infringement of their human rights to stop them from filling their faces for five minutes.

This heartfelt plea goes out to the Eating Guerrillas. We can do a deal, I'm sure, come to some compromise agreement, only please stop stuffing yourselves. You're going to pop. (Or I am.)

Comments

James

17 September 2008, 3:06PM
James

But isn't eating supposed to be a social event? As the family gathering round the table has shifted towards the sofa and the TV, maybe this social eating ethic has gone forwards to the trains and streets just as you see around Thailand, Cambodia etc - sharing your eating experience with passers-by rather than with the family in the home. My grandparents always stopped for 'elevenses' every morning which always included some snack along with milky coffee - going back to the times when you had to eat to stay warm in the cold Norfolk winds. And smaller meals often is good for you if you're diabetic.

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StowmarKate

17 September 2008, 3:13PM
StowmarKate

Stopping for elevenses or a teabreak in the afternoon is one thing (my mother and grandmother have always had 'a little something' with their cup of tea in the middle of the afternoon), but the constant gnawing is contributing to the obesity epidemic. Nobody (except possibly a diabetic) NEEDS to eat between meals, especially not those of us who sit at a desk all day. I don't want to sit at a keyboard or use an atm or sit in a train seat and be reminded that the person there before me just had to snack, right then and there. Yuck.

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drusilla

22 September 2008, 12:23PM
drusilla

I think a good idea is to eat when you're hungry. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But how many of us actually ARE hungry when we reach for that chocolate bar? Having recently come back from holiday in Belgium, where we were not limited to a set time, I found that we'd have breakfast around 8-ish, then a coffee and a snack (the only one of the day) about 11 o'clock. Dinner would then be around 2, and tea about 7 or 8pm (if at all, depending on the size of the lunch.) My advice is to listen to your stomach, and rate your hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being not hungry and 10 being if-I-don't-eat-something-soon-I'll-pass-out. If it's only a 4 or 5, have something to drink instead.

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