Do people really consider it unreasonable to eat on the train?

[MyNewBearTotoro]

Reading another thread in which a poster mentioned eating on the train and I was really surprised by the responses calling her unreasonable/ antisocial for bringing food onto the train and the vitriol she was facing for this alone.

Do people really consider it unreasonable to eat on the train or is this just one of those 'only on Mumsnet' things?

I know it's not pleasant to be stuck next to someone eating smelly food, but equally lots of things are unpleasant on trains - being crammed in close to a stranger, oversized luggage, crying babies, other people's conversations, air-conditioning to high/low etc - but just because some people may find it unpleasant does that automatically make it unreasonable or anti-social?

In an ideal world people would not bring smelly food onto the train, but in an ideal world neither would people bring on crying babies/ noisy children etc but we are human and we need to eat, especially as many people will be making journeys over several hours long. Choices of food are usually limited by either what is available on board the train or what is available from the shops on/ around the station and sometimes hot or fast food is the only option available.

Obviously hot food is permitted on trains, my local train company has buffet carriages which sell hot food (including bacon rolls) and sandwiches (including tuna fish or egg mayo) for people to buy. So I'm not questioning whether it's allowed but I guess I'm curious as to whether people genuinely think it shouldn't be. And, considering it is allowed, are people who do eat on trains genuinely considered anti-social or unreasonable by some?

Why do some folk insist on talking Pish, of course you can eat in first class or I imagined my free bacon sandwich and coffee on the hours journey into London.

Look way now to those wh might be easily offended!

I do find this whole subject of 'polite foods' fascinating.
It is just planes and trains?
Tomorrow I take a packed lunch to my volunteering job. We have a very small staff room and I have never known anyone take issue with anyone's food choices - even when they use the micro wave and heat up something spicy. I shall take a flask of soup, some take sandwiches, some have very 'messy' salads- some noisily crunch celery and carrot sticks!
Should we all be having a 'quiet' piece of fruit with our dry bread? I take it that a mango is out!
Funnily enough we all manage in an area not much bigger than a railway carriage.

No wonder the latest report on the elderly in care homes being dehydrated is a problem- clearly they haven't watched the adverts!

And believe it or not, Voyage, we are all like that. Considerate. But sometimes we need to eat because of circumstances or the length of the journey.

IT depends on 'considerate' - if you take offence at a tuna and cucumber sandwich it is going to prove difficult!

Same here Mehitabel. I did notice someone had left a half eaten curry in the fridge and I did chuck it 4 days later!

People eat all sorts, some of it wouldn't wet my taste buds but tis up to them!

'It's simply down to being considerate. If you eat food on public transport, be considerate. Hopefully like many other aspects in society.'

And that's what people are unless they are littering the place or splashing it on people or spraying bits. If I don't eat in a timely fashion, I can become unwell. So can't always wait till no one is there or nibble furtively.

Good lord. Who is a Sociopath, Voyage? That's a bit extreme surely ..

Now because we eat a tuna and cucumber sandwich because we are on a train over lunchtime for 2 hours, we're sociopaths?

DD gags at the smell of greasy food. In that situation I'd tell her to deal with it or never take the train.

Why would a mango be out?!

Personally I don't like it when people heat up smelly food in staff rooms either, if they clean the microwave out its not quite as bad

Very messy the way that I eat them Tali! I suppose OK if bought pre chopped.

mehitabel how do you eat a mango?! I'm curious

I try to eat it as demonstrated by Hercule Poirot in one of the Agatha Christie episodes, which was very neat and needed a knife and a spoon. It fails with me so I peel it and cut bits off- it depends on how ripe it is as to how easy. Do you have an easy way?

It needs to be done sometimes, but having something stinky like a McDonalds fillet of fish or tuna nicoise salad is revolting, inconsiderate and unpleasant.

I also can't bear hearing people eat or having to sit/stand somewhere I can see people chomping their food with their mouths wide open. Makes me feel ill. If you aren't able to eat without making other people feel ill, please wait until you get home!

mehitabel I slice the mango off the stone, score lines in it, push it inside out and then slice it off!

It all sounds easy Tali but it isn't something I would try on a train- it never works for me.
I do find MN endlessly funny. I must lead a terribly boring life because I never see people 'chomping their food with their mouths open'- they just quietly get on with it.

None would guess from some of these posts that eating is actually a social occasion, something that you do with family and friends or for business or for a date etc.

So, if you anti-foodies see someone eating (God Forfend) a burger on your favourite train what should happen?

1 - Would you like them to apologise, put it in the bin or a hermetically sealed bag to microwave and eat at home?

2 - Should they continue to eat their meal - possibly grabbed on the way home because a meeting ran over their lunchbreak & as soon as they get home they've got to get to their shift at the soup kitchen.

3 - Should you just sit there, mind your own business & accept that you have no idea why people are doing things and should practice a bit of the tolerance you'd like the rest of the world to show to you?

I'm going for option 3, but I'll be praying someone tries to exercise option 1 on me in the next few weeks as I fancy a laugh & haven't publicly dissected a moron on the train for a while...

Just to back up expat on this one..

I currently have gestational diabetes. I thank god it will probably go away after pregnancy because I genuinely have no idea how people manage their diet permanently like this. My hormones are rampaging, I'm insulin controlled and those dosages get adjusted twice a week because the control isn't working very well.

Unlike expat I eat meat. However, because we're still trying to get dosages right I have to eat very regularly. About every three hours I start feeling the warning signs that my bloodsugars are getting a bit low, but if I eat the wrong things they can very easily get too high.

Things that help: Protein. Eggs, meat, nut butter, cheese, so forth. I carry packs of nuts and sample cheese in my bag, but given the choice between a bit smelly/unsociable or setting off a nut allergy I'd pick smelly.

Things I can't have: Bread (all those sandwiches at stations are right out). Anything with carbs in high quantity (those pasties are out too). Cake, obviously. Some fruit - apples are okay if eaten with protein, grapes are banned.

It is phenomenally restrictive and at present I've had to pull back to working from home until we can control it better. I used to travel on a train, minimum 90 minute journey each way - which did not include getting to the station, once or twice a week. If I were doing that now, even if I had this under better control, I suspect I'd be buying cold meats/smoked salmon from M&S and forget the dirty looks. You're talking good manners, expat is talking life or death. Sorry, but expat wins.

Someone said earlier that no-one would begrudge a diabetic a chocolate bar. Please understand that a diabetic eating a chocolate bar IS ALREADY HAVING AN EMERGENCY. The smelly stuff you're complaining about is to stop it getting that far.

And doesn't the testing for it suck, swg? I had to go to the diabetes clinic and it took like ALL frigging day. I had been sweating buckets and peeing loads at night but thought it was just perimenopause and I was thirsty because I was sweating so much and peeing a lot. I just mentioned it in passing at a smear test appointment so she said, 'Oh, let's just do a little test and if it's not something that we like we'll just refer you on.' I thought, 'Sure, but I'm sure it's just hormones.' I'm 44. It wasn't just hormones.

I've had to start exercising a lot to get rid of weight round my middle, too, walking daily and doing weight training. It sucks but it can cause serious problems if not controlled. Three of my paternal aunts/uncles died from heart attack in their late 50s/early 60s and all were diabetic. My sister is also diabetic.

I hope yours goes away. Lucozade tablets are good to carry. I keep some on me.

Try making your own nut butters. I use a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall recipe I found online that's delicious. They probably smell, though. And then I dip crunchy celery sticks in them and munch.

I was never a big fan of sweets and always preferred veg to fruit, thankfully and don't care too much for loads of bread. Following a low GI diet has helped me and helped me take the weight off, too.

Plus, the drugs to control it, sometimes they are hard on the gut.

Hang in there!

It sucks SO MUCH. It seems like at present it might be purely hormonal with me. I had GD last pregnancy so they tested early in this one. Passed my 12 week GTT with flying colours, but begged for a meter just to occasionally self monitor. Got to the week before my second scan (week.. 19 I think?) and thought "I'll just monitor for a few days to check". Well hello there, persistent fasting level over 6.0, you shouldn't be there.

That was a month ago. My second GTT SHOULD have been next week but fortunately I picked it up early. I'm now on 3 metformin a day, an insulin injection every night and still got a fasting level over 6.0 this morning. Every time we put dosages up my body drops slightly, thinks about it for two days, then goes back up. I've had, I think, four "acceptable" fasting readings since we started testing - and that's with an awful lot of hard work. And the metformin screws up my stomach and my appetite and I'm failing to put weight on (I was plump before this - a bit of babyweight - but kid is entirely feeding off me just now) and SPD limits my ability to exercise and arrrrgh.

I'm buying nut butters from myprotein.com cos it seems cheaper that way. Discovered cashew nut butter and apple is gorgeous and does not screw me up and trying almond butter next. I totally have fantasies about grapes and fruit juice though. And potatoes - god, for a big bowl of potatoes and butter where I didn't have to also force down protein.

Read and inwardly digest these last few posts, you ones that find eating so abhorrent!

To you it is a smell, to others is is completely necessary.

IKnow you forgot...

1. Act like a secret agent talking into a hidden mic in a sandwich bag, taking small but unobtrusive bites of your sandwich whilst walking up and down the train hoping no one notices.

Wow swg. You're only half way, your poor thing. I had GD with twins and it really sucked. Insulin twice a day and all the finger pricks, I felt like a pin cushion. By the end (34-37 weeks) my levels were all over the place, too high, too low, nothing was keeping it stable, I was seriously worried about my babies, but they were fine. BTW, I found basmati rice was fantastic even though it was white. Better than many other things and I ate it loads.