5 New Year's food resolutions that have nothing to do with dieting

Welcome to 2019. If you’re still searching for an inspirational New Year’s resolution, you’re not alone. We’ll say, to be fair, that as we are between the standard New Year and the lunar New Year, you still have some time to think up something amazing.

But if you need a little inspiration, staff at The Washington Post put their spin on food resolutions which are incredibly thoughtful and encourage mindfulness.

Find togetherness at the table

For most of human history, eating alone was not an option. We hunted and gathered and ate in packs to protect ourselves.

Now we do the opposite.

The number of meals eaten alone is increasing; the current average is seven to eight per week (way more for me). I love being alone, so I am not here to pathologise it. But often I choose to eat alone just because it is too complicated (logistically and emotionally) to eat with others.

So for the entire month of January, I will eat only when sitting down, at a table, with a human. I am not restricting food in any way; I am expanding the opportunity for food to be what it has been for thousands of years – a connector of people.

We have become so obsessed with the “what” of food (Keto? Paleo? Atkins?) that we have lost focus on the “how”. Eating alone is a modern construction of affluence, a by-product of a society in which – if you are born with privilege – there is enough space to be alone. Like all privileges, it can be used to help or harm. And I am often not strong enough to do the right thing (see: binge-watching, debt, texting at inappropriate times).