One day, you're sitting down at the dinner
table of your local restaurant, about to be served. The waiter circles around
your table, placing each dish down one by one. You reach out to grab your favorite
dish, before someone yells at you to stop. The person then proceeds to hold out
phone and take a picture of each dish.
Rather than eating your food while it's
still hot, you're forced to sit back and wait until the person gets the perfect
angle of each entree, smiling as if the person is on the cusp of greatness,
doing some sort of worldly service. This is a daily epidemic happening all over
the country, and it needs to stop. Let the children eat!
There used to be a time at the dinner table
where a family could not proceed to eat until reciting of a prayer or start with
Bismillah. Now, posting pictures to Instagram has become the standard pre-meal
ritual. Rather than choosing between different prayers, we choose between
different #hashtag wording as our generation's holy
words.
Why do people of our generation find it
necessary to constantly post pictures of their food? Have we become that food
obsessed of a culture? I acknowledge that obesity has become an epidemic in our
country, but do we really love our food so much that we need to digitally share
it with everyone we know?
I do
admit, there may be an occasion where something you eat is picture-worthy. If
you are about to consume something intriguing like eating at from well recommended
restaurant, then yes it's appropriate to snap a picture to share.
But when you are eating the same teh tarik
and nasi kandar as every other mamak in a 10-block radius, you can leave the
camera in your pocket. Right now, I have more pictures of food on my newsfeed than people!
Now you can see that when breaking fast in
Ramadhan or Chinese reunion dinner montages and family slide shows, consisting
no longer of pictures of the family, but of every meal they have ever eaten.
And it's not just the picture taking that's
annoying, it's the subsequent checking of the phone every five minutes for
instant gratification that bugs me too. “Does everyone approve of my meal!?? I
hope a lot of people like it!” I think some girls only “like” other girl's food
pics when it's a picture of a heavy dish and they know that their “friend” is
about to consume all the calories. “Yes, she's gonna get fat! Eat up ya giant
cow!! I want to be the skinniest of all!!”
So if you are reading this article now, and
you are one of these photo-taking perpetrators, or know someone close who is, I
hope you have been inspired to right the wrong and get back to taking pictures
of people rather than food.
We
shouldn't have to wait until our food gets cold just because of your need for
attention and acceptance.
Note:- We need to share the food & not the picture.
