Slow Eating is Not a Must for My Husband

This blog will be about food, love, and my husband, and I hope you will enjoy all three subjects. There is a  movement in the United States I’ve read about, called “the slow eating movement.”  Apparently the objective is to take back America from fast food eaters, and to try to restore the enjoyment of food and good company to this country.  In their view, part of the joy of eating is to have decent and interesting conversation during a meal, instead of pulling their car up to a fast food drive-up window and gulping down their purchase in a hurry.Not only has enjoyment been debased by such fast food, but also the etiquette of eating dinner. In my view, this is an admirable objective.  I hope they can find my husband so they can entice him to join, not because he eats fast food, which he doesn’t, but because he’s a fast eater of any kind of food.  In fact, they will have to convince him to sever his membership in the “No Meal Left Behind Club” in order to integrate him into their movement.When we first met years ago in Washington, D.C. I was a bit more shy than I am now.  When we would go out to a restaurant, I would be only half-way through my meal when he would be finished with the meal, the dessert, and in the process of asking for the check.  When I finally worked up enough courage to ask him to slow down, he told me he couldn’t enjoy his food if he didn’t eat as fast as he did.  He then told me the story of his first experiment with dating after he had been married for a great many years before he was divorced. He had invited a woman from Argentina, a psychologist, to eat dinner with him in his apartment in Washington.  She accepted, because she apparently saw in him an eligible bachelor.  My husband, who admits he had absolutely no knowledge of how to deal with single women after so many years of being married, asked a friend how he should conduct himself.  His friend advised him to be certain to eat slowly.  “Women like men who eat slowly,” he told him.  So he prepared dinner in his apartment, served it to the psychologist and to himself, and then sat down to eat what was probably the slowest meal of his life.  He told me he was so deliberate about taking small bites and waiting for a long time before taking another, that it took him nearly an hour to finish only half of his plate, and by the time the hour was up, he believed he was full, despite the historic small amount of food he ingested.  Leaving the food on his plate, he and the good doctor sat down to talk.  Apparently, because he was so obsessed with the food he left on his plate; his conversation grew more and more boring.  Ultimately, the Argentinean shrink became so frustrated she got up and left.That experience cured him of slow eating, because not only did he lose contact with the woman who never wanted to see him again, but because he left a couple of pieces of very expensive fish on his plate that he had to throw away.The lesson here is that if you are going to join the slow eaters club, be sure both you and your dinner partners have something interesting to discuss, or the experiment will fail miserably.  But if you take care of the subject matter, I can guarantee that you will have a better experience by taking your time and savoring the food.  By chewing for a longer time than you are accustomed to doing, you will find flavors you’ve never experienced before.  Based on my husband’s experience, you may also lose weight by leaving a lot of the food on your plate.