lunchables syndrom

Lunchables Syndrome
One of the funniest stories I ran across over the last two years was my discovery of the "Lunchables Syndrome". This is someone whose diet consists of a lunchable style of eating which in effect acts like fast food training. For those of you who do not know, lunchables are a snack pack made for kids which could be served by a lazy parent. This conditions a child to eat a diet that never changes. The lunchables diet usually consists of individual components. Everything is similar in shape and size like a chicken nugget or a biscuit. Everything has one drab color, and one drab taste.

My pal Harold, whom I met while attending UTSA, had a very restricted diet. It wasn't restricted for health or political reasons. It was restricted in accordance to "The Lunchable Syndrome" As I got to know Harold, I realized he ate a lot of frozen food, never prepared fresh food, and his idea of healthy cooking was opening a can of green beans, geeeeze! He had aversions to foods with natural unprocessed texture or color. He wouldn't even eat chicken on the bone! I started to dig deeper as to why.
One time I took him out to eat at an Indian buffet, knowing he would hate it. I tempted him into going because I offered to pay. The first time around the buffet table he got white rice, some meat ball things, and a couple of pieces of lettuce. I thought "oh no the fuck you don't," and started to act angry. Thats the kinda of relationship we had, I was an older brother figure. He is a nice kinda guy, but sometimes he isn't all there. I told him i was going to load up his plate for him. I went and grabbed a plate to load up his dish and told him he is gonna eat goddamn it! The look on his face was priceless, fear and discomfort over some green pea gravy!

I like to get into character roles a lot. I think i fell into the role of Chet from "Weird Science," and that guy from Robo Cop who held up the convince store with a machine gun then was smashed in to the glass cooler. The way he said, "you better find that safe!"

So with this psycho intense calmness, I was talking to Harold. "My god you gonna eat this chicken. Don't make take you out back here and beet your ass."

The typical responses were "don't like it," "no " and "it tastes funny" or "that's gross."

I have never felt uncomfortable about eating anything, short of cannibalism. But fucking chicken? And Indian style chicken is gooooood.
So it got me thinking, where did this diet start? How can somebody get this strict about what they eat especially if they have no diet constraints such as vegetarianism, or for health reasons?

What bothered me most was how he said this food was "gross." How could he know it was gross?

Gross food, when the lunchables diet is your ideal, is anything doesn't look like a toy. It is something akin to baby food, but its toddler junk food starters, and its easy to fix and a easy leap form baby food. This starts developing habitual eating habits. It takes a certain kind of personality to stop their diet here. One who resists change and prefers habits over exploration. There is an unholy contentment in their ability to eat the same thing over and over. Even if lunchables had a different meal for every day of the week, this would probably only be five food ideas, pizza or tater tots, hot dogs, etc,
I can tell a lot about somebody by the way they eat. How they go about eating, deciding what to put on the plat or eat off of it. Tthe way they pick the food up and its placement. Timing is critical ,the decisions i watch while they eat is interesting because they are lining up desires.
My war on the lunchable syndrome is a critique of people who haven't grown up, and demonize other food as gross. Then again they might not have as tough a stomach. One of my old buddies who is a vegetarian used his vegetarianism to mask his weak stomach it ran in his family, as i found out, and his way of solving the problem was throw out everything that made him sick. It turned out to be more puritanic than anything.

Those who like to explore their tastes get bored real fast with the lunchables diet.

Posted by chickengeorge at December 23, 2007 10:09 AM