In a recent telephone chat with an editor of mine about an African American soul food/Southeastern U.S. cuisine eatery he might want me to review, I'd told him of the place in question being the only restaurant I've every patronized where I had fried bologna as a breakfast entree. That recollection reminded him of how he prepared fried Spam for himself some years ago when he was earning less money, By way of implying that there's nothing wrong with fried Spam, I told him of how my South Korean graduate school roommate quite liked Spam (as do many South Koreans). My editor friend's reply was that he no longer identified with eating Spam. Apart from contextualizing food in the broader concern of cultural heritage, I don't think I'd ever heard of food being posited as something with which someone identifies. Do you consider what you eat as part of your identity?

If you do consider what you eat as part of your identity, what, among the factors listed below, contributes to your perception of what you eat as part of your identity?

It was only while having started writing these questions that I thought of a parallel, or example, of how food is currently a factor of my own self-identification. Since I've started seeing a dietician in regard to my issue with cholesterol, I think of myself as someone who is conscientious about my consumption of fiber. I've talked with about this aloud with very few people, but it's still a way in which I now view myself. With my example in mind, if you answered the first question No, are you still sure you don't view what you eat as part of how you identify yourself?

More recently, I was dining at a pay-what-you-can-afford vegan restaurant I like when a lady, whose husband practices veganism, sat at my table until her companion arrived. Perhaps because she and I didn't discuss the breath of cuisine I like at frst, she asked me how long I've been vegan. I told her I'm not strictly vegan nor vegetatrian but enjoy good food (at a good price!) whether it contains animal prodcts or not. To what extent have you considered the variety of food you like as an element of your self-perception?

As I'm composing this question, it's less than two hours since I ate breakfast, and all the writing about food I've been doing, even if it's often from an abstract perspective, has gotten me in a mood for at least a bit more food. After going through this survey, how hungry are you?