Mealtimes for me are sacred. They’re a time where, regardless of my anxieties about upcoming assignments, I just sit down and eat (whilst watching YouTube, of course). That’s why, as we pass through the last few weeks of Michaelmas term and I’m faced with the reality that time is just hurtling by, I’m trying to remind myself of just how critical mealtimes are, and why it’s so important to respect them even when it’s tempting to put them off because of schoolwork or substitute them with something more ‘productive’.
Thankfully, I haven’t yet substituted any mealtimes entirely. My stomach and all-consuming dedication to a gastronomical appetite won’t quite let me. That being said, as someone who usually loves savouring a good meal for over an hour, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to fully enjoy my meals when there is always the pressing weight of something to be done. There is, of course, the physical fact that there’s sometimes only about an hour and a half for lunch in between my classes. If you add the time spent walking to a restaurant, sitting down and ordering, and then waiting for your food to arrive, that’s easily thirty minutes gone. If you also factor in the time spent walking back to the department and settling into the classroom, you only have around forty minutes to enjoy your meal – all whilst thinking about the next class and any upcoming assignments.
Now, instead of slowly savouring food like I usually do, I’m shovelling it into my mouth at lightning speed. There’s always something to do as a student. There’s the tangible, like upcoming summatives. But as an introvert who loves food and dining culture, I also have to think more specifically about the social repercussions of my mealtimes. If I go to that restaurant in Jericho that’s been on my list since forever for lunch, am I somehow missing out on my classmates’ lunch gatherings in our department building? Will I be judged in a negative way for wanting to sit in a restaurant instead of quickly wolfing down a pre-packaged sandwich and then sprinting to the next class? Maybe they’ll think I’m high-maintenance. Or, more likely, they won’t think about me at all, because I’m not there.
But that lunchtime overthinker is just who I am now, a product of past circumstances. Before becoming a student in Los Angeles, I was one of those people who always skipped lunch. When classmates asked me what I was doing during that time, I told them the truth: I was in the library. Despite my smugness about it—I thought spending mealtimes studying instead of eating would give me some sort of leverage over my peers, who weren’t spending that time being ‘productive’ in the traditional sense—that practice actually hindered me. I sat through classes famished, my stomach growling. Sometimes I felt lightheaded and nauseous from how hungry I was. I couldn’t concentrate. My grades suffered. Still, I kept skipping lunch, even when all evidence pointed to the fact that it was having a massively detrimental effect on both my health and the things I was striving towards. I watched my peers succeed and get high marks after high marks, feeling envious. How could that happen when I was the one skipping lunch to be productive?
Before I got to Los Angeles, there were only the limited proximity options of non-metropolitan suburbia: make your own lunch or go to the cafeteria. Thus I credit LA, this city that I love so much, for helping me shift my mindset about food. LA is a paradise of diverse, delicious food. In between classes, I could choose from so many different cuisines. Even when there was a time limit, I could easily pick a restaurant nearby. My relationship with mealtimes changed fundamentally when I became a student in the city. I learned to look forward to them, because it meant I could go out to get seollongtang (Korean ox bone soup) in nearby Koreatown paired with a mugwort latte, or carne asada tacos and horchata in downtown LA. I learned to savour my meals slowly. It’s also no coincidence that my grades were a lot better when I was actively eating and enjoying lunch instead of skipping mealtimes.
I also have to credit food influencers with changing my perspective on food. I started watching food influencers’ content a lot more in LA, simply because it’s LA—where both influencer culture and food reign supreme. From them, I learned to save restaurants and cafés to put on my ‘must go to’ list. I looked forward to going out and trying a dish that a local influencer had recommended. Food influencers made me love mealtimes because I could check items off my list. They gave me an excuse to explore all that LA had to offer. So, I have to credit food influencers for infusing me with a sacred respect for mealtimes.
Oxford isn’t LA, but there’s a beauty in the preciousness of restaurants here. Because options for dining are much more sparse than in LA, that leads to increased attention on every single one from both influencers and myself; I get to know a limited number of restaurants a lot better than I would if there were more options to try. Here, there are only around three Thai restaurants for every three hundred in LA. As a whole, there are also less diverse food options in Oxford than in a metropolitan city like LA or London—the latter of which I’ve made frequent trips to.
Despite that, I want to bring the mindset I had in LA to Oxford: the respect for taking the time to sit down and eat. I won’t deny that it’s harder to do that here specifically because it’s easy to quickly exhaust your go-to spots and think that there’s nothing left to explore; to believe that maybe I can just go without a meal today. Yet from watching food influencers, I’ve tried new restaurants in Oxford, and I’m looking forward to visiting more.
That’s why after class, I’ll be going out to eat in a restaurant, which I constantly remind myself that I’m incredibly privileged to do. If I’m ever tempted to skip a meal, I’ll just think about how throughout my life, there have been no instances in which it ever made sense to think that mealtimes aren’t productive. They can be the most productive times for the body, and for students, the brain.