Eating with our eyes

Train bento lunch in Japan

It’s pretty fascinating how much of our appetite is informed by what we can see.

Bento is amazing at assembling a micro buffet all in one lunchbox. It’s like a miniature handheld food festival packed into a container. All those colours and textures lure us in before we can even smell what we think could be a good thing. Then there’s the trust involved that the makers know us well enough to know what would appeal before having met us.

In so many cultures around this blue planet people feed each other. The first scenario to pop to mind is office workers heading out for a meal as they either don’t have the resources or time at home to pack their own lunches. Or maybe they prefer sampling all the wares of their neighbourhoods - traveling through their taste buds. Or maybe they have someone caring enough for them to make a meal to partake in.

Is time a major player in who eats what?

Over these lunch breaks, I’ll just be attempting to do just a couple of things -

Enjoy my lunch and ruminate on the space created by the midday pause.