Have You Eaten (Rice) Yet?

“A few years ago, I asked some children, ‘What is the purpose of eating breakfast?’ One boy replied, ‘To get energy for the day.’ Another said, ‘The purpose of eating breakfast is to eat breakfast.’ I think the second child is more correct.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Eat

There’s a common greeting in Asian cultures, used as a way to say hello. In Chinese, it’s “Chi fan le mei you?,” or “Have you eaten (rice) yet?” In Vietnamese it’s “ăn cơm chưa?,” meaning, “Did you eat?”

In the US, our common greeting is “How are you?, a question that seems at once generic and difficult to answer in a meaningful way, and also oddly personal. How am I? How much time do you have?

We Americans would never great each other by asking whether each other is hungry, unless heading to dinner of course. We have too complicated relationship with food for that: We love it, we hate it, we need it, we distance ourselves from it, we take it for granted, this nourishing, life-giving thing. How freeing would it be to experience food just for what it is — to enjoy it, rather than overload it with all these other things?

How liberating would it be to greet each other with, “Have you eaten yet?” and acknowledge one of our most basic needs, and also signal the simple purpose of food as food, breakfast simply as breakfast, not anything more.