Eating Away the Boredom

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”  This is the opening line to Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.

It makes so much sense, that it seems like something we have known all along. However, why is it that we eat so much?

Bored.

Simple. It’s boredom. We eat because we are bored. We eat for fun, as a way to break up the monotony of the day.

We eat breakfast too quickly in the morning. We don’t often get to enjoy this meal. It’s just a way to satiate us so we can start our day and quickly get out the door.

We eat lunch at work.  This is a highlight of the day, as it is something exciting we wait for all morning.  This is akin to getting peanuts and pretzels on an airplane.  It’s exciting so we eat even if we aren’t hungry.

Then we eat dinner at home. Often times, we don’t get much time to make something wonderful and delicious that we would want to eat (or want to make), so we cook frozen pizza and choose to spend our time eating the meal rather than preparing the meal. Who has time to cook something grand after dragging yourself home from work? It’s not the lack of will. It’s the lack of time.

During the day we get restless. We need to walk away from our desks, if even only for a few minutes. To help us do that, we get coffee. The coffee isn’t used so much to keep us awake, but used as an experience; a stimulating event that helps break up the tediousness of wiling away our lives in front of a computer screen. Coffee is equivalent to pressing refresh on our webpages. We are using coffee to refresh our lives.

Boredom. We are bored. I am bored. I’m hungry.