Food psychology

I was having a discussion with a coworker two weeks ago over burritos from a nice hole-in-the-wall in Milpitas. I noted that my friend's burrito had been assembled in such a way as to have the various ingredients of the large meal (perhaps 55% the size of my forearm) segregated into "sections" so that while he was eating with knife and fork, as he moved from front to back, he'd have sections of primarily tortilla, to rice, to chicken, to guacamole, and so on. I mentioned that this was something that annoyed me in items like burritos and sandwiches, as I like an equal distribution of different tastes with each mouthful, and my typical response to this scenario would be to either redistribute the ingredients in a more equitable manner, or barring that, to take forkfuls/bites from various parts of the food item to get all the appropriate tastes in my mouth. Interestingly, he said that he preferred it this way, as he enjoyed the variety of moving from tortilla to sour cream to rice to beans, etc.

This got me thinking... there's always been the old axiom of "You are what you eat", but I suspect that there's probably some correlation between your personality and how you eat as well as what you're actually consuming.

For example... I eat pizza (non-thin-crust, at least) with a knife and fork. I typically cut the crust off, and eat portions of the crust with portions of the cheese/topping covered pizza. For imbalanced sandwiches, I'll typically try to bite small portions from different parts of the sandwich to get an adequate mix of fixings in my mouth.... and so on. Perhaps this is indicative of something in my personality that enjoys multiple things going on at once, and evaluating how different aspects of experience complement each other. The downside is that this thinking process usually takes more time to complete.

On the other end of the spectrum, I know people who are totally linear in their eating style. You probably know a few - they're the ones who eat all their fries before getting to the burger. Perhaps these people are more likely to take things one at a time so that they can focus exclusively on that one item to grasp every nuance and extract every bit of enjoyment out of it before moving on to something else. However, a possible downside is that these people will tend to miss out on the ability to appreciate multiple dimensions at once.

I'm totally speculating here, but hey, it's my blog, right?

Weekend update(s) to come, covering Cal's victory in the Insight Bowl, a day at WCCCC, and Biblical applications on the basketball court.