The Dark Side of Eating at Your Desk

And how people feel strangely fine with talking about your food

Eating at work under the peripheral vision of your colleagues is an overwhelmingly common practice: A 2012 study revealed that only one in five North American workers take lunch breaks away from their desks. And just last year, the New York Times Magazine ran a feature chronicling the rise of eating at one’s desk: “Breaking for a midday meal might have made more sense when laborers toiled with their bodies on tasks — building, planting, harvesting, manufacturing — that required rest and refueling. But in an economy where the standard task is sitting in front of a computer, lunch is less intuitive and far more optional,” wrote Malia Wollan in “Failure to Lunch.”

But despite articles that preach again and again about how taking breaks makes us more productive at work (and photographic evidence of how depressing we look when we don’t), most of us won’t dare to break the cycle. Maybe you’ll forgo the 10-minute walk to Chipotle and back so you can leave work at a reasonable time. Maybe no one in your office takes lunch breaks, and you’re afraid doing so will make you look less committed. Maybe you have yet to master the fine art of making breakfast at home in the morning, and you’re forced to scarf down a muffin at your desk.