Eating in the Task Oriented World

Horwitz, the author of “Eating at the edge”, pointed out an interesting and debatable social topic of people’s contemporary eating style. Various people have their different eating time and space. Instead of having everybody in home for lunch, people chose to eat in their own time-space(16). As a result, traditions and customs that related to eating in the past decades are gradually disappearing. People start to follow a new global eating pattern that is strongly influenced by “the task oriented world”. More specifically, the most efficiency way for eating is chosen.

At the beginning of the article, Horwitz came up with an idea called “eating at the edge”. “The phrase refers to occasions when food is an additive to a situation, such as a cigarette would be, rather than being definitive.” (1). From my personal perspective, the phrase perfectly explained the importance of food in people’s heart is changed. In the past, eating is an important part in people’s daily life. It’s the time for people to spend time with families, chatting with friends and having social activities. The eating time and space were definitive and people followed the tradition of eating. However, people prefer to eat alone in the most convenient way nowadays. Take college students as an example, they eating during the walk to classroom or dorm, nibbling during the lecture and choosing food that they could take away easily. The most importantly, food producers start to supply food with a new style that could meet customers’ new need in the task-oriented world. To be specific, package of food is modified into single-serving package.

To be honest, I think I’m a workaholic who regards eating as a nutrient taking process in my daily life. I would prefer putting my whole time and energy on working and study with simple form nibbles in my dorm rather than wasting time in a restaurant and waiting waiters serving my food. However, I still miss the time when I share food with my parents and have a pleasant conversation with them during our dinner.