06 · Why We Are Forgetting How to Eat
From hotpot to light meals: the birth of modern dietary anxiety. Perhaps the real issue isn't what we eat, but that we have gradually lost trust in our own bodies.
When ordering takeout late at night, I often fall into a strange state of hesitation.
Scrolling down the delivery app reveals an infinitely extending menu: hotpot, malatang, fried chicken, sushi, light meals... There are too many choices. Everything looks good, and everything makes me hesitate. After repeatedly comparing the calories of several salad and light meal shops, I suddenly feel an extreme sense of exhaustion. Yet, I never hesitate when ordering bubble tea. A cup of bubble tea might contain six or seven hundred calories, and I am well aware of this. But when I order a proper meal, I suddenly become overly cautious: Is there too much rice in this? Is this rice bowl too oily? If I order fried chicken, will my daily calories exceed the limit? As a result, an absurd combination sometimes appears: a cup of bubble tea paired with a light salad.
So, why are modern people increasingly forgetting how to eat?
From Time Discipline to Body Management
Many people assume that eating three meals a day has been the rhythm of human life since ancient times. But if you push the timeline back, you'll find this isn't the case.
In the long history of agrarian society, the human stomach was free. Farmers might eat something simple in the early morning, replenish their food at any time during breaks in their daytime labor, and have a more complete dinner at night. Eating revolved more around physical labor and hunger, rather than fixed points in time. What truly turned "eating on time" into a strict system was actually the industrial age. To match the perpetual motion of machines, lunchtime was violently compressed. Eating was no longer a natural behavior, but more like a quick "refueling." Black tea with massive amounts of sugar and cheap carbohydrates at the docks became the tailor-made "fuel" for industrial machines. Capital only cared about one thing: how to use the cheapest food to keep the human body running.
But today, things have changed once again. "What to eat," "how much to eat," "is it healthy." Diet has been completely moralized: eating boiled salads represents self-discipline and ambition, while eating fried chicken and hamburgers equates to depravity and loss of control; drinking zero-sugar beverages is an elite form of health, while drinking full-sugar bubble tea is a self-abandoning indulgence. Eating is no longer just about satisfying physical needs; it has become a form of self-evaluation.
The Dislocation of the Chinese Stomach and Modern Society
In this health narrative, traditional Chinese food culture seems to carry an original sin. Many would say that Chinese cuisine is too oily, too salty, explodes with carbs, and is not healthy enough. From a nutritional perspective, this claim is not entirely unreasonable. But from a cultural perspective, Chinese people rarely eat solely for the intake of nutrients. Whether it's a family banquet, a hotpot gathering, or a barbecue, the essence of Chinese dining is a "culture of connection." A Western light meal is eat for nutrition, whereas the Chinese dining table is often eat for connection.
Tracing back its origins, China went through a long agrarian era where high-intensity physical labor required extremely high energy density, making salt and oil precious, scarce resources. The underlying logic of Chinese food was designed for a social structure that demanded severe physical exertion. This is where the contradiction erupts: today, we sit in front of computers every day, spending most of our time processing various mental tasks. Our daily physical activity is not even equivalent to an hour of field work by our ancestors. Our behavioral patterns changed long ago, but our cultural memory and taste buds stubbornly crave the fuel of the agricultural era.
"Zero Sugar" and the New Shackles of Health
When people began to realize the health issues brought by high-oil, high-salt diets, modern society offered a new solution: light meals, low-carb diets, keto, and zero-sugar drinks. It seems we have more scientific choices, but this is actually a more hidden form of pressure. Modern society has turned "health" into a new kind of moral standard. When you get used to reading ingredient lists, calculating calories, and tracking your daily intake, your body is no longer just a body; it becomes a system that requires constant maintenance, bowing down to this anxiety-ridden evaluation metric.
Binge Eating: The Desperate Rebound of the Control System
Those who maintain strict routines, precisely controlling their protein and low-carb intake, are often the most susceptible to falling into a cycle: restraint → breaking the rules → extreme guilt → even stricter restraint. In psychology, this is known as "binge eating induced by restrictive dieting." That moment of unhesitatingly ordering bubble tea is often not due to a lack of willpower, but an animalistic rebound against such strictly controlled behavior. Modern society harbors a strange dietary paradox: food has never been as abundant as it is today, yet people's anxiety about eating has never been as obvious. In the past, dietary choices were simple: you ate whatever was available. Now, the more choices there are, the more judgments our brains need to make. Sometimes we don't even trust our bodies anymore, preferring to trust nutrition labels, health apps, and fitness influencers. Food is gradually being alienated from an experience into a set of data.
Relearning How to Eat
Before the industrial age, people ate according to the sun and the body's natural rhythms. During the industrial age, people ate according to the factory clocks and whistles. And today, we begin to obey calorie charts and algorithmic recommendations.
Perhaps the real problem isn't what we eat, but that we are gradually losing trust in our bodies. We no longer ask ourselves if we are truly hungry; instead, we check the time first. We no longer ask ourselves what we want to eat; instead, we calculate the calories first.
But food is not fuel, nor is it data. It was always meant to be a part of our lives. Perhaps true freedom isn't finding that flawless, zero-sugar, zero-fat diet—it's letting go of the judgment, and relearning to listen to and trust your own body.
See you around.
— Maggie
Beijing · 8 March 2026