It's not normal how much we eat

At an all day lecture.

Begins about 8:30.

The crinkling bags begin at 8:35.

Cut up peppers, baby carrots (VERY noisy if chewed with mouth open), rice cakes.

Rice cakes with cream cheese.

The whole cream cheese container, conveniently with a knife. No wonder women walk in to these lectures with carry on bags like they're going to Israel.

That is in the first 15 minutes.

Then the break, when we all run to get another coffee and oversized overcaloried margerine laden muffin. Really just cake in a muffin paper holder. Very difficult to eat gracefully, once you've bitten off the top, since they are usually quite crumbly. Trust me, I've sampled them all.

Ten minutes after the break is over, new crinkling bags emerge from the shopping bag wrapped in the Macy's bag in the carry on bag. Out comes little strips of cheese (I can spot a South Beach Dieter anywhere) in baggies, then whole wheat flat breads with a small homemade portable container made out of a plastic cup cut in half with saran wrap on it. And chummus in the cup. THIS IS A PROBLEM. Baby carrots and pepper strips and cheese do not smell. Chummus does. And it must have come from a fresh container because it REALLY smells. Garlicy chummus on flat breads, wafting across the auditorium.

What this non jewish presenter thinks of all this wrapping and unwrapping of bags within bags and leftover pickle containers with big salads and crunchy noisy food in silver foil and whole packages and containers of cheeses and spreads and fruit wedges I do not know.

And this was all before 10:30 a.m.