Eating habits

COFFEE for me used to be half-shot only. Or even better—decaf. Meaning, not deflate. Hehe.

But for now, no more coffee whether half-shot or decaf. Ho-hum.

And that’s a real ho-hum since a caffeine-free life may lead to sleepiness. So, at a coffee shop, I may order omelette instead of coffee and cake. Or drink lots of the service water if all they have is coffee, tea, or them, er, carbs.

I always go directly to the menu’s pages for beef and pork. If it’s the first time for someone to be with me, he would be shocked by the food on my plate. But other friends, who already know about my diet, simply let me be.

Last year, when I was only starting with my newly discovered eating habits, there was this lunch where a friend and I ordered bulalo and fried chicken. When I noticed that he was looking at my plate, I told him, Sorry, nahurot na nako ang bulalo. His reply: Sige lang, naa pa may fried chicken. Haha.

Then last month, he organized a thanksgiving lunch for volunteers. He chose not to order packed lunches anymore, and gave us food stamps instead for their university canteen, and specifically said this: So that those who don’t eat rice can order whatever they prefer. Haha.

If my resto order has carbs, I usually ask the wait staff to serve that separately, or to replace them with scrambled eggs. But sometimes I forget to request for that. Whenever that happened in the past, I’d always end up eating the carbs—because they’re there. Like Mount Everest—you climb it because it’s there. But nowadays, I leave the carbs untouched on my plate, or transfer them to another plate for sharing.

Why this much ado about food? Because it’s the easiest to use, misuse, abuse. Between alcohol and drugs, alcohol is easier to buy since it’s legal. Between alcohol and food, food is, of course, easier to buy since, aside from being legal, its consumption doesn’t require a minimum age.

Has anyone ever told an eight-year-old that it’s illegal for him to eat fries, sundae, and soda? Hmmm. There’s the drug buy-bust. But there’s no such thing as a food buy-bust. Or even an alcohol buy-bust.

When I buy groceries now, I still roam around the supermarket but my cart’s contents have changed. The milk drinks are now beef. The nuts have been replaced by pork. And the potato and corn chips have morphed into chicken, bangus belly, salmon, and other fishes.

When I was a student way back when, I remember always buying the ham sandwich or siopao, and the Chippy, peanuts, and Coke at the school canteen. When I was already working, I always looked forward to “recess” when food vendors would drop by with their siopao, maruya, banana cue, banana turon, camote cue, bibingka, suman, pancakes, peanuts, halo-halo, buko salad, taho, etc. Had I known then what I know now, I should have brought bacon as baon for snacks.