You Are What You Eat?

Last night the hubby and I went to dinner at one of those Mongolian barbeque places where you load up your plate with all the fixings of your choice and then the cook fries it up for you on a huge sizzling wok type thingy. If you have never eaten at one, you select your ingredients from a long line of food that looks like a salad bar. There are all kinds meats, seafood, vegetables, noodles and sauces and the combinations seem infinite. I usually select the same meats and vegetables every time: chicken, cabbage, bok choy, spinach, mushrooms, tomato, broccoli, and scallions. I add a few rice noodles and then scoop on the various sauces to make it all medium spicy. Once in a while, when I’m feeling particularly adventurous, I’ll add some peas or curry sauce.   Hubby usually chooses all the varieties of meats and seafood, lots of noodles, then throws in some corn and mushrooms.  I kept telling him last night to put something green in there so he placed two spinach leaves in the mix.

Going to a Mongolian barbeque is like going to the all-you -can-eat buffet or grocery shopping: I love looking at what other people have in their bowls, on their plates, and in their shopping cart and figuring out what kind of person they are.  At the barbeque you can easily guess at what kind of eater a person is by looking at their combination.  One guy next to me had only meat and noodles in his bowl.  He was heavy-set and was eating alone.  No judgements there – I’m sure he is a great guy and perhaps he even had a salad for lunch- but how about trying some vegetables?  At the grocery store I like to guess if the shopper is single or married and, I confess, I silently judge their food selections.  A single twentysomething guy is likely to load up his cart with white bread, soda, frozen pizza and snack chips.  A mom shopping for her family has several gallons of milk, boxes of cereal and frozen waffles, and multiple packs of Lunchables.  Next we have the urban hipster who only shops organic and eschews any processed foods:  God forbid they choke down a Pop Tart for breakfast.   I can’t help but look at the cart of an obese person completely filled with fatty, processed foods and wonder why they don’t make healthier choices.  When I go shopping most of what I purchase looks fairly healthy.  Because of my low-carb lifestyle, most of what I eat is fresh.  There are very few processed food items I can consume while anything with sugar or white flour is completely out.  But Hubby needs his potato chips (which I may or may not sample), chocolate ice cream, Coke, and boxes of macaroni and cheese mix too.   Of course he can eat all that stuff and not gain an ounce.  Bastard.

I realize what you eat for one dinner and what is in your grocery cart are only snapshots of a person’s life.  I don’t know who that person really is based on that alone and most of my assumptions are probably dead wrong.  But standing in line waiting for my meal to get cooked or groceries to be scanned is pretty boring and imagining who people are based on what they eat passes the time.