We measure food waste in grams and feel appropriate shame. We measure opportunity waste in nothing and feel nothing. This is wasting time guilt: guarding leftovers while squandering hours that never return.
The roshogolla in London was technically perfect but emotionally incorrect. Traditional dishes carry food and identity—more than ingredients, they carry belonging, memory, and the hands that know your history.
“It’s not about the food—it’s about something completely mine to control.” That’s the trap of eating disorder control: tightening rules until they rule you. Real freedom arrives when trust in the body replaces tyranny over it.
We are experts at detecting others’ dietary failures while remaining strategically blind to our own. The cravings we hide reveal more truth than the foods we display—this is food shaming psychology, where every judgment about another’s plate confesses our private shame.
The refrigerator light reveals a truth: I’m feeding fullness while starving what’s empty. Emotional hunger vs physical hunger asks a harder question—what does the soul actually need, and how do we nourish it without more food?
Accidental Communion: Breaking Bread on a Train The train lurches. My luchi flies across the compartment, landing squarely in the lap of a woman reading Anandabazar Patrika. She looks up, I look mortified, and somehow—in that universal moment of shared embarrassment—we both laugh. “Bhag kore nin,” she says, tearing her own food in half. Share
Travel grants us temporary exemption from our constructed identities. In foreign places, we’re anonymous. Call it vacation food psychology.
This used to be my favorite meal—now my body says no. It’s not failure; it’s evidence that taste changes with age, and that grief and gratitude can share a plate while we learn what satisfies the person we’ve become.
The mango tastes exactly the same—but something essential has vanished. That is childhood food memory: not just flavor, but the summer that surrounded it, the context that made sweetness feel like innocence rediscovered.
Three biscuits, then five, then shame. I realize I haven’t been eating food—I’ve been eating silence; this is emotional eating, a numbing ritual that moves feelings from heart to stomach. Tonight I ask, What am I actually hungry for?
Curated insights, thoughtfully delivered. No clutter.
