Easy Mac for the win

First, may I just say how thoroughly confused I was about this picture? I saw it at the beginning and assumed I would be getting an explanation, but when I reached the end, I realized Horwitz didn’t mention it at all. What do dark chocolate and a fruit snack have to do with anything!? I suppose since they are on the edge of the table, Horwitz is trying to make a clever connection to the concept of how we eat “at the edge.”

Eating at the edge means eating at non-traditional times and while doing other things. The meal isn’t the focus. Horwitz described it as “when food is an additive to the situation…rather than being a definitive” (42). She provides support for her theory by pointing out situations in which the world is adapting to our new eating schedule. The international space station was design so astronauts would have to plug their trays into a central unit and eat together; they complained about this and fell into a more eating on-the-go routine. The typical American family has been shown to not sit down at regulated meal times all together anymore and we are also more likely to be looking at a screen while we eat and multitasking (Horwitz). Not only do we eat “at the edge” of meal times in a literal sense, we also eat “at the edge” of time and space. Horwitz provides the example of Brussels were the EU meets. There restaurants stay open at strange hours of the day to accommodate officials. People travel to Brussels from many different time zones and this way they don’t have to conform to the new local time, but stay in their own. Airlines have a similar way of catering to business people by having different meal options suited to their needs. Removing the strict customs of three meals a day is an “invitation to innovation” (45). On college campuses, food services can come up with new and different ways to provide meals in a student’s busy schedule. Along with opening three times a day, some dining halls stay open all night, serving breakfast at different hours, and if that doesn’t suit needs, every dorm room comes equipped with at least a refrigerator and microwave. Horowitz speculates that this might also point to our tendency to live in our own world, on our own time schedules (46).

I connected with Horwitz’s point about how food companies are adapting their products to fit the needs of a busy society. She cited Campbell’s Soup in Hand, a container that basically takes the shape of a microwaveable sippy cup full of soup. Foods packaged to grab-n-go were my saving grace during high school. Instead of Campbell soup, for me it was Kraft Easy Mac. It wasn’t an oddity for me to be at school from 6:30 in the morning til 10 at night. So it was a good day when I could throw some Easy Mac in my bag and come five o’clockish have something hot to tide me over between activities until I could get home. It was rare for my entire family to be home at once for a meal, so we got used to fending for ourselves. Even at school, lunch was an “additive”; I always ate quickly in our choir room before starting a lunch period rehearsal. I really ate “at the edge.”