The Slow Food USA Blog

Stalking my Stomach

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Eating is something I take very seriously - and so is the concept of memory.  Yet in spite my love of eating, I often have a hard time remembering what I ingest - even just a day or two later.

I moved in with an old friend at the start of September and we have been having dinner together most nights - but with time I began forgetting what I had cooked.  Knowing my love of data collection, he suggested I start writing our menus down.  In college I studied history, and the intersection of memory and record is really fascinating to me. In this case, how does the concept of enjoying a meal change when I can’t recall it without the help of notes? 

I began tracking our dinners, but soon enough that expanded to jotting down all my meals, snacks, and desserts.  At that point I realized, why keep this to myself when I could share it with the world through twitter?

This step changed the process for me.  What began as a way to remember personal experiences, became a willfully public statement about my food decisions.  Knowing that someone - anyone - could see what I eat has begun a curious change in my behavior.  I have always eaten well, but now the pressure is even greater.  Social pressure, though silent (and potentially non-existent!), made me want to strive to eat well.

Once I had begun down this path, why stop there?  Looking at my consumption is interesting, but then I realized I could bring the analysis further by bringing in how much all of this cost.  I keep pretty good track of my finances, so I began pulling numbers.

New York can be a tricky place to eat on a budget - but in the ten months since I landed here, I have found my way around the markets.  I now eat what I want while spending only 12.04% of my income on buying local, good, clean, fair, food.  I am slightly above the average American spending of 9.8% of disposable income on food, but doing pretty well. 

Looking backwards at the month of September, my food spending was split like so:

   
• 13.0% for my CSA deliveries (Each week I receive around 30 pounds of vegetables and fruits from a Long Island farm.)
   
• 44.7% for the farmer’s market (I usually buy two birds a month, a touch of sausage, some cheeses, dried beans, supplementary veggies, some flour for bread baking, and dairy.)
   
• 21.9% for brick-and-mortar grocers (Mostly at a local cheese store, and a dry goods seller for nuts and dried fruits, chocolate, peanut butter, some flour, and spices.)
   
• 6.1% for ice cream (Yeah.  My ice cream habit is bad enough that I keep an entire spending category for it.)
   
• 4.8% for drinks (I enjoy the occasional glass of wine or cocktail when out on the town.)
   
• 9.5% for restaurant meals (An infrequent a slice of pizza and a meal in a sit-down local twice a month or so.)

I will be interested in continuing to learn about my own eating habits through this experiment - and I would be happy to have you follow along.  You can follow my consumption on twitter here or searching for my handle, NLeamy.  I indicate food that is homemade with the tag (h), prepared food are labeled with a (p) , and restaurant meals by (r).  In about a month I hope to write another update with what I’ve learned and how my eating is changing.