This week, I want to focus on how people’s eating habits change during a vacation or trip. I have noticed a big change in my diet whenever I visit a new place. Pretty much nothing my family eats on a trip is what I’m used to eating every day. Usually, there are more fried foods, fewer vegetables, and just an overwhelming amount of difference in where we eat. Growing up, it never really bothered me that everything I was used to eating was thrown out the window but ever since going to college, I’ve noticed a big change. I am big on routines and even though I hate to eat the exact same things every day for every meal, I still like consistency in my diet.
I grew up in a middle-class family so we were lucky enough to go on a few vacations but they were always heavily budgeted. We always planned to have breakfasts prepared before the trip and frozen (essentially making several homemade egg sandwiches) to bring with us and to eat out for one other big meal; food was usually our biggest expenditure and most of our daily plans were based on where and when we would be eating. My family is big on variety when visiting someplace new so we would try to eat at as many new locations as possible, thus expanding the range of foods we ate even more. Even as a kid, I would always leave a vacation craving the normalcy of home-cooked meals and familiar recipes despite how much I enjoyed the food I ate.
Although my experiences on vacation are bound to be different from some, I think there is a general consensus that eating habits while on a vacation are a disruption from the normal. This makes sense: when visiting someplace new, why just eat the same things you always do? When at a restaurant, why get something that you could easily make at home, even if you know you’ll enjoy it? These mindsets have a lot to do with how place impacts the ways in which people eat.