Hannah Borno

Usually I quite like going to America, not just for the shopping and the sights but because at least most Americans are a bit chubbier than me. This is not the case in Manhattan. (I guess they have to be skinny, there’s so many of them crammed into such a small space. If everyone suddenly gained an extra inch round the middle people would start popping out of New York like corn from a pan.)

Manhattanites are usually either at work or working out. And when they’re not jogging around Central Park, they’re talking about Real Estate. On my last trip I overheard this in Soho: “you know that flat in Tribeca I bought for 28,000 nine years ago? Guess what, I just sold it for 3 million”
They’re obsessed with real estate because there isn’t any. They hanker after it, become obsessed by it and then binge. It’s exactly the same way that they’re obsessed with food. In fact, they’re so utterly obsessed with food on that island that there are almost ten thousand restaurants and cafes on Manhattan alone.

In this environment – read- a city saturated with gorgeous food, all cheap because of the weak dollar - it’s hard to stick to the teachings of mindless eating and my new found strategies somehow fail to help me as soon as I leave the routine of home. In addition I’m here to work but the job has fallen through (who knew it was so hard to get an Access All Areas pass to New Jersey Women’s High Security Prison?) so I’m just hanging out for a few days – catching up with friends.
This is dangerous. Maybe I’m unimaginative, but I’m passing my time by shopping and eating. The shopping, by the way, is not going well - I find myself unable to fit into any of the clothes in the boutique shops in Soho and the West Village - they are clearly intended for svelte, morning-jogging, star-jumping, squat-thrusting Manhattanites, not me. The eating however is going too well. I graze all day long. If you pass a cute little café in Greenwich village called ‘Once Upon a Tart’ it’s clearly impossible not to pop in and have a Madeline with a macchiatto - even at 11.00am, and when you’ve just had a croissant and a coffee at Pain Quotidien.

In Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink speaks of the danger of ‘visual cues’ that prompt us to eat - and Manhattan is just one great big visual eating cue. It’s like the house made of sweets in Hansel and Gretel. At lunch, I’m seduced by the ‘visual cue’ of the Zagat guide sign in the window of Tomoe Sushi in Greenwich village and like a robot am somehow compelled to march in and order a large( yet incredibly good value) sushi selection - even though I’m not hungry. Well, at least it’s low fat.

That evening my friend chooses an eatery known for its pizzas just next to the Lincoln Centre as we’re seeing an opera there.

One guy dominates the whole restaurant shouting at his date about how he adores his steak black on the outside, blue on the other. ‘Do you like chicken on the bone?’ he yells at her ‘No,’ she replies - he proceeds to tell her the best places to get chicken on the bone in NYC.

Wansink tells us to stop eating by listening to our internal cues, but the terrible thing is I’m still munching on my pizza and I just can’t locate my internal cues. ‘Am I full yet?’ I ask myself ‘Do I need to stop eating this extremely large pepperoni pizza?’ Before I discovered the answer I’ve finished the pizza. The carbophobia I developed before my wedding has evaporated.

At the Metropolitan Opera house where we see Satyagraha by Philip Glass, I see Lucy Liu sitting across the aisle next to an arty looking man with a beard who’s dressed entirely in black. When the lights go up and she stands to applaud I notice she doesn’t look as if she eats too much pepperoni pizza, in fact she doesn’t look like she’s ever even whiffed a pizza in her life.

On the way home, we pass a Pinkberry frozen yoghurt parlour… I’m not sure, but I think I’m still full from the pizza. Or am I? I squeeze my midriff - Yes, I am.