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Meanwhile, the internet was permanently changing how we interacted with our surroundings. It coddled preteens concerned with feeding their Neopets into teenagers who sent illicit heart emoticons to their crushes on MSN Messenger on the family computer. Without realizing it, we sacrificed the development of critical social skills for the reward of communicating without the awkward blushing and burping of real life. The internet broke our still developing brains and taught us new online social cues at the cost of real life social skills. We learned that entire relationships can be built off handmade heart emoticons and a mutual interest in Blink-182.

Even if we weren’t aware of it, choosing what to have for lunch gave us agency by offering an opportunity for concrete awareness and control. Food became a tangible form to return to after an increasing amount of our lives was being experienced through a screen.

Today it remains one of the only mediums that cannot be replaced by a digital replica. It doesn’t matter how great virtual reality technology gets, it has yet to come close to satisfying the feeling of sinking your teeth into a juicy hamburger with crunchy pickles and extra cheese.

Food tethers us to reality while simultaneously allowing us to escape from it.

In the Netflix series Master of None, Dev, played by Aziz Ansari, is well aware of the power food has over his reality. He discovers his ability to act independently and make his own free choices in bowls of steaming spaghetti Bolognese as viewers hear the loud physicality of noodles being slurped in a quiet home full of creature comforts like wifi and air conditioning. Pork is a source of rebellion when the faces of his Muslim relatives appear blanched as he orders crispy pork with Chinese broccoli for dinner. Learning how to make pasta is the answer to reconciling a failed relationship. Two bottles of Martinelli’s apple juice provide a moment of levity during a midnight trip to the drugstore for Plan B with a one-night stand. “You gotta get the apple juice,” he insists, his eyes suddenly aglow. Dev’s excitement around eating could be used as a time capsule to explain to future generations what people born in the ’80s and early ’90s were like. For us, food is often at the root of comfort and conflict. It is, in many ways, everything.