This story, like so many others that I tell, takes place in the line at Subway. I was at Subway because I had come to campus to teach, and because I hadn't eaten any breakfast, I was planning to get a footlong tuna sub. Then I looked up at the sandwich board, and noticed for the first time that there were numbers after the sandwiches. They weren't prices. The gougey prices charged by our campus Subway are at the top. No, these were the calories in each half and full sub. Now, if you've eaten a tuna sub at Subway you know that it tastes like junk food. What's actually in it doesn't bear much thinking about. But it's tuna, so it beats any number of other things, like steak or buffalo chicken, right? I'm not going to repeat my experience in you the reader by telling you the actual count, but suffice it to say that in fact the tuna sub is one of the most caloric things on the Subway menu. For a person of my size using a certain well-known overall count, that sub could account for more than half of my daily calorie intake. And that's before adding toppings like cheese and chipotle sauce which add extra fat, which in turn make some types of eating enjoyable.
I believe that human beings, once they free themselves from the tyranny of the boom and bust cycle that today's culture forces upon them, should eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full. I believe counting calories is harmful behavior, and I believe menu calorie counts are eating disorder triggers waiting to happen. But I hadn't experienced the impact for myself. I don't have an eating disorder. I've simply absorbed years and years of cultural conditioning about good and bad eating. My reaction to the knowledge that something I wanted to eat was 'bad,' when I hadn't known that previously, was surprisingly emotional. An added problem was that I couldn't just switch to something 'better,' because tuna is one of only two things at Subway I can eat. I would love to just eat a turkey sandwich, I argued in my head, but I can't, because I have this other commitment which is more meaningful to me. It's not fair that other people get lots of choices, which can affect other aspects of eating than simly 'I'll have this bacon' or not. Of course the other sandwich I can eat, the veggie delight, is one of the least caloric on the menu. And I eat it often, because it's both tasty and cheap. But who wants to eat a salad as her first meal of the day?
At the same time as my cultural conditioning, however, I've taken on a certain amount of intuitive eating counterprogramming. This liberation-type theology was saying to me: this is the sandwich you want and you are really hungry. The best solution would probably have been to get half a tuna and half a veggie delight, but at any Subway and especially at our gougey one, that is way less cost effective than a footlong. Watching my wallet is a constraint that is actually important right now. In the end I got the sandwich, and it was junkily delicious, but I felt guilty about it. And I can't unlearn the calorie thing, which means I am less likely to order it in future despite ostensibly not caring about such things. Some policy-makers would call that a success. They say it promotes knowledge and more thoughtful choice-making. But many people (especially women) in our culture who have access to Subway are people who think about things like this all the time, and not in a healthy way. I don't call making people uncomfortable and guilty about their natural functions any kind of a success. It also makes it about twenty times more likely that a person who felt like she's cheated herself at lunch stops for a cupcake on the way home, either because she ate the fatty sandwich so she might as well 'give up' totally, or because she had something that didn't contain enough fat and is now craving what she lacks. So the policy backfires anyhow. Having a personal calorie-count moment has solidified my objections to this practice, and I hope my readers can stay free of this kind of experience.
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