Grub and Grace

I was thinking about the habit of blessing food, saying grace before meals, or even the little pause-phrases ("Bon appetit!") that signal that it's okay to begin eating. My impression is that such customs are, if not universal, at least very widespread.

There's an awful lot to be thankful for in food. Not just the fact of nourishment, not only the proximate labor that went into cooking and serving the food, but the distant labor that went into growing, harvesting, and transporting it, the laws that attend all stages of its production, the vast complex of civil infrastructure that makes it possible for you to chop your food with a knife on a counter and turn a knob to cook it. And what about the history and culture that told you that this was food in the first place, and that this is how you eat it? You can infer a whole society from a lunch. Seen this way it seems almost disturbing that food should be eaten alone.

But I do eat alone, of course, shoveling food into my face like a stoker shoveling coal into a firebox, concerned with nothing more than the moment's gratification, and considering the debt that I owe for my body's sustenance to have been entirely discharged by the time that I've converted into money and forked over for the meal. That doesn't seem healthy.

Lent's a season of fasting, but I don't think I'll give anything up this Lent. In this age of diets I'm forever giving up one thing or another - sugar, wheat, dairy, meat, alcohol, caffeine - and it's now not so much a discipline as a nervous tic. Instead, I think I'll add something on. If I'm going to eat, I'm going to say thanks for it. And if I'm going to buy myself a meal rather than preparing it, I'm going to buy someone else a meal as well.

What about you? Are there any rituals surrounding the act of eating that you partake in, alone or with others? Do you have anything special that you do before meals?