Self Surveillance Report

On Thursday, I arranged an occasion to meet my friend and a burger with them, but my own ‘neurotic self-surveillance’ would not allow me to eat an eggplant parmigiana burger (Guthman 2003: 55). Forty-four mentions of ‘green’, ‘vegetable’, and ‘healthy’ peppered throughout my diary signify my relationship to the food that I choose to eat, particularly because those words are consistently followed by my citing feeling “good’ after eating that food. My feeling ‘good’ was evident after eating vegetable-laden food or fruit, as though it were an achievement (Guthman 2003: 53). Accordingly, eating an eggplant parmigiana burger would have made me feel “unhealthy and gross” and “greasy”, and so I chose a small broccoli salad instead, and ordering a vegan burger that would be ‘up to scratch’, so to speak, later. Similarly, my disappointment and, at its height, …show more content…
This pattern elucidates my relationship to food, because I expect to feel ‘good’ after eating something that I consider ‘good’.

Another theme that emerged is my use of ‘excuses’ for eating food heavy in carbohydrates or fats, namely having company, or that the food preceded or followed a night of drinking alcohol on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I noted on Friday that a meal of beans and beetroot salad with a heavy dressing was “legitimate” because I was eating with a friend, despite the fact that a dinner of a bean and beetroot salad is not particularly heavy or something that others would necessarily consider a ‘meal’.

Furthermore, having company while eating contributed to my perception of the food as a ‘proper meal’, such as on Friday and Monday, even if the food itself did not constitute anything more substantial than what I would have when eating