My roommate is from South Africa and it’s been very interesting to see how differently she does certain things. The one difference I noticed between the two of us right away was the way she tasted food. Mbali doesn’t eat. She tastes. She chews very slowly, considers each piece of food she puts in her mouth. I can almost see her mind working as she picks up a fork, and surveys her plate. Eating for her is more than a task, it’s an experience. She is slow in tasting, and each bite has a purpose. Because of this deliberate method, she eats much less and enjoys her food much more. I still shove as much of it into my mouth as possible in an attempt to silence my growling stomach.

It’s very American, I think, to eat and not taste. To chew and not savor. I think it might be the reason obesity is a major killer in our country. We want and want and want. And so we eat and eat and eat. As much as possible. I think if we just stopped to think about what we were eating and why we’d see the problem… and we’d see that food isn’t the only thing we over-consume. We shove the media down our throats, too. We heap technology onto our plates. We sprinkle everything with expletives. We push so much at ourselves, we don’t have time to see what we’re consuming, much less think about why we’re consuming. That’s why Mbali is able to eat so little and enjoy it so much. That’s why France has “skinny bitches.” Those bitches think about what they’re eating. They enjoy food and the media and life with purpose. They taste it, they don’t put it in their mouth chew and swallow.