Changing Perceptions of Shared Food

Home-cooked pizza in the oven.

I question I have been asking myself lately is how my perceptions of food have changed. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I believe I was very fortunate to have grown up in a family that made an effort to sit down every evening to dine together. Not only did this teach me to value the company of my parents and siblings, but it also taught me to value the food we were sharing. In my family’s home I was made very aware of the time, effort, and money that went in to each evening meal. My father might have been late to pick me up from school because he had to stop by the grocery store to get ingredients, dinner might have to be served late because my mother had been too busy to start preparing it, or maybe my parents had put in some extra hours this week to ensure we could afford the best options on our next grocery run. Often, my siblings and I were active participants in the preparation of the meal: shucking corn, peeling potatoes, stirring the sauce. And finally, after all the work each one of us had put into preparing the meal, we all sat down to share it. There was no perception of yours and mine at the dinner table, the food was ours. Most importantly however, I was taught to avoid wasting food. To leave the table with food still on my plate was a considered a taboo. How could I waste the product of all of our hard work?  Though as we have gotten older it has become harder to find time to eat together, I still carry the values I learned at my home's dinner table.

            Upon my arrival here at Wheaton however, the values that surrounded my relationship with food were called into question. No longer was I part of the process of gathering ingredients and preparing my meals, the food merely appeared in front of me. It seems fair to say that the same amount of energy and care does not go into preparing a meal in the dining hall as it had in my home. Besides from obviously affecting the taste, this has changed how I perceive food. The food I was eating here was not as valuable to me as the food I had been eating at home. Here, I had unlimited access to food whenever I wanted. I did not have to finish my plate, if I didn’t like what I had chosen I could throw it away and try something else. Sharing food became irrelevant, after all why share when more food can easily be acquired. Neither was sitting down to a meal as important as it had been to me, as I increasingly found myself getting food to go. However this doesn’t mean that the value of food has been lost on me. Wheaton events such as community potlucks and house dinners where friends come together to share dishes they have prepared have kept my value of

a well-cooked meal alive. If anything, my college experience has taught me to not take the experience of sharing a home-cooked meal for granted!