What’s with the obsession with food?

[runoutofgoodusernames]

So many threads about:
What shall I have for dinner?
Any ideas for some healthy dinners?
Blah blah blah food!

Am I the only person alive that really doesn’t care about food? I eat some kind of cereal/ yogurt combo for breakfast, sometimes forget lunch, whoops, and don’t even think about dinner other than ‘mmm bit peckish, what’s in the freezer?!’

Is this a ‘thing’ or am I abnormal? The world seems obsessed with food doesn’t it? I just eat to not die basically, what am I missing?

Humans generally like things that stimulate the senses, but we’re not all the same obviously. I love food, but I’m not keen on touch eg massages or music as I find it too distracting.

Humans have always been obsessed with food. It’s in our DNA and it’s correlated with survival and the progression of the human race. We were clever enough to start making tools and killing animals to eat for example.

Anyway if you’re not that concerned about food why have you started a post about it? The irony. Scroll and move on, or failing that get a life.

I don't get too excited about food. I have a few recipes I like that are quick to cook and when bored of those try something else.

I think it's a reaction against growing up in a house where everything heavily revolved around meal times and what we were eating, at the expense of pretty much everything else.

No I wouldn't use that phrase because men do not typically have all the extremely complex food related issues that many women do. Which is rooted in misogyny.

If OP had said "I'm not fussed about food" then most people wouldn’t bat an eye. But she didn't, she pretended that she simply could not understand why people were 'obsessed' and 'had the headspace for it' evidencing that some posts on MN talk about food. Like thousands of other posts talk about other things.

And MN has a very pro-ED bent where posters are frequently derided for eating too much, or the wrong things or for being overweight with lots of feigned surprise that people eat differently. The 'oh Gosh I just eat to live, don't care about food at all, often whoops miss lunch, clearly my body doesn't need much food' is the kind of common head tilty tinkly laugh posts that are used to make people feel bad about enjoying food or wow, getting hungry even.

I don't believe for a second that an adult woman doesn't understand why women on a forum ask about recipes or think about food.

I don't care about fashion but I'd never make a post saying 'wow who has time to think about this or care? people who do must be OBSESSED about how they look, how very strange, would be so interesting to get into their heads and understand why they even care'. Because that would make me a bit of an arse because I'm a grown up who knows everyone thinks differently and don't pretend that someone being more interested in something than I am means they or I, are abnormal in some way.

And for the record, if any man made a post like OPs I'd have thought he was an arse too.

Hi, totally agree, OP. Actually I do tend to treat myself too much with chocolate and sweet stuff (so, am not skinny), and have always had a healthy appetite generally, but beyond that basically live on pasta, toast, easy stuff. Not bothered really and certainly think there are more fulfilling and rewarding things to think about/focus on. Eating out is OK but rarely find it super exciting.
Foodism strikes me as some kind of aspirational snobbery thing, a way to differentiate oneself from the ill-informed, lazy masses who don't know any better and lack one's own refined taste buds and superior culinary/nutritional knowledge... 😁

Dh really loves food/ingredients/cooking/recipes etc but he’s currently laid up and can’t do any cooking. I hate cooking and would be happy to just eat a slice of toast for my dinner every night and be done with it but there are 4 (sometimes 5) people who need dinner so it’s not an option! Dinner time is the one time in the day we all come together as a family to have a chat and discuss anything that relates to all of us - dinner time is more than just what’s on our plates.
If it were just me living alone I think I’d live off sandwiches and toast though; cooking and all that comes with it - it’s so time consuming and messy!!

I love it all, the shopping, cooking, & eating.

What is in your freezer OP?

All "AIBU not to 'get' ..." type posts implicitly express disapproval. Otherwise the OP would just google whatever the trend or phenomenon is that's got other people's attention.
Using terms such as "obsession" ramps the disapproval up a notch, so people are understandably impatient with the OP, especially so when the question is about something as essential to life as food is.

Yep.

I have lots of interests, food and cooking among them. I can really identify with the PPs sister upthread, who sees cooking as an art form. I think that's how I see it as well. I like investigating new recipes,finding unusual ingredients, testing recipes on my long-suffering family and friends 😄😄

Really though it's like me looking at my best friends fibre crafts and saying, how does anyone get so obsessed with weaving and spinning? It's just cloth, go to the shop and buy some. I wouldn't say that to her, because I understand that people are all different. She loves her weaving, I love my cooking.

I have fond memories of cooking a particular recipe with my mum as a child and feeling really proud when we all sat down to enjoy it. She died, young and of cancer, a few years ago. I'll be cooking the same recipe with my kids later and I'm sure they'll enjoy doing it as much as I did. Food and cooking is part of our culture and family life.

It’s a traditional way of bonding and celebration. Look at religion and how food is an integral part of festivals etc.

Do you struggle to understand why people like/do things you don’t in general, or is it just food related? For example, I don’t like F1 racing, but I can completely understand why others do.

@PurpleWisteria1

Many people enjoy cooking and eating a lovely meal, or cooking something for the family to enjoy?
Food can delight the senses and be something to really look forward to!
Your food sounds very dull to me. Haven’t you ever cooked something you loved? Take it you don’t have kids?”

why would you take it she doesn’t have kids?

You could say that about anything.
Eating is necessary and some people (me included) enjoy cooking. I'm fine with the fact that many don't.
However, look at Style and Beauty, for example: wearing clothes is necessary to keep warm (and legal) and some people display a great interest in exactly what they wear. I only do on special occasions.

Carry on concentrating on your novel - don't give headspace to food if you don't want to, but don't think that some great writers haven't been/aren't very interested in food.
The novel will probably only be improved by the knowledge that not everyone has the same attitudes to things.

Food used to be really important to me. But after years of healthy meal planning, I now alternate processed and healthy meals. My eldest daughter is unbothered by food. She doesn't have a favourite meal/food, she just sees it as refuelling. She'll often prefer to eat a lump of meat/yoghurt/cereal and be done with it. My other daughter is the opposite, and often suggests meals we could make! I think we can turn meals into chores, and eating cereal instead sometimes is fine.

CoalTit · Today 10:00

Nicely put.

I go through phases of being creative and engaged with cooking, and periods where I'd happily live off toast and vitamin pills. But food occupies brain space for many reasons - growing up in toxic 90s diet culture with impossible superwaif aspirations, becoming a mother in orthorexic MN culture: you feed your children RAISINS do you want their teeth to fall out, PEAS excuse me I think you mean SUGAR BOMBS, if you give them UPFs you're a heartless lazy uneducated bitch responsible for the obesity crisis....food is a stick to beat women with and it would be lovely to be so elevated and able to rise above it all and pity those silly obsessives but for most of us that isn't the case.

Bully for you OP. I have a health condition which means it’s important for me to eat regularly and a healthy balanced diet. So yes I do care about food.

💯

Yes, I think you're the odd one.
I love cooking and eating, food is an important part of my (and many people's) life. That's why different cuisines are considered essential part of one's cultural heritage. But it's also simply very pleasurable eating fresh, good quality ingredients combined together in sometimes innovative ways. I guess you won't be able to understand it in the same way asexual people don't understand what's the fuss with sex. I struggled to eat properly when I was pregnant and it was awful, I was genuinely depressed and couldn't imagine having to live like that.

I love food and used to enjoy cooking but since I had kids I loathe it. It's so much mental space. If I could give them a pill instead of it taking up so much of my day I definitely would. So I sort of know where you're coming from OP. I resent the relentlessness of it

I love food! I think some people just see it as fuel, my husband had a friend like this. He ate because obviously he had to but didn't really enjoy food.

Could not care less about food.

Can’t stand food shopping and long drawn out meals are my idea of hell…

Luckily DS is a teen and sometimes we’ll cook together but mostly we keep it simple and healthy. I love exercise, so i see food as fuel. The world is obsessed with food in such a unhealthy way too.

IKR? This sneering "you're just a pick-me girl" response is all over the site.

It basically translates to, "The OP feels differently to me about something and has posted publicly about it in a way that I perceive as self-aggrandising. This diminishes me. Therefore I must post publicly to take her down a peg or two, and show everyone that her assertion of difference is not down to curiosity or chattiness, bit us in fact a negative personality trait that invalidates anything she has to say, and correspondingly lifts me up. That feels better!"

Most people are more interested in food than you are yes

But those threads are also just an opportunity to chat and connect