Desktop Dining

On the day I arrived to CNN one of the first things my beloved boss warned me was to take time to go and get lunch when I am hungry. "These guys never eat, " she said, pointing to my two producers sitting across her. "I eat all the time," she added smilingly and this time it had less to do with the notorious American overeating habits than her final stage of pregnancy. Here we go, I thought to myself: Corporate America 1.o1 - "workpeople don't care to eat", or at least workaholic producers don't...
Now, of course this came as no big surprise. We all know that Americans work hard and work more than many other nations in the world. They're proud of it as they think this is what drives their economy and not consumerism or Mexican immigrants. We also know that they like to eat fast and when they do, they are notorious for eating junk. So it's really not a big surpose that a new survey found that the vast majority (75%) of American workers tend to eat their lunch at their desktop instead of stretching out tired muscles, schmoozing around a little with colleagues and focusing for one second on what's indispensable for every human being: Food.
Meals in America in general are degraded to simple acts of fuelling up the nutritional system when it comes to workday lunches. As opposed to Jean-Pierre in Paris who would easily spend an hour or more out somewhere savouring a plat du jour in a random brasserie or cafe on the corner, John, the conscientious American worker 'grabs a bite' or 'something to eat' and speeds back to his cubicle to munch on a Sub, a pizza, some chips or a muffin, in exceptional cases a tossed salad...delicately served on top of the keyboard, piles of files or random documents - consumed while checking emails, watching the latest Colbert Show on Youtube or getting updates of highly important Lindsey Lohan anorexia gossip from YahooNews.
This disturbing and common phenomenon of "desktop dining" in our office made me wonder: is it just the modern side-effect of the wide availability of take-away food and a different concept of eating in general, is it an extreme version of American workaholism, or just simple hypocrisy that makes the average American worker "eat in" instead of taking the time to "eat out"?