Go Tokyo Your Experience
Have you ever felt fear while having dinner with others? In the eyes of many, dining together can induce physical discomfort such as palpitations, nausea, and even pallor. This phenomenon is known as “dining anxiety,” which has recently garnered widespread attention in Japan.
According to expert analysis, the formation of dining anxiety may be closely related to Japan’s long-standing educational policy in families and schools that emphasizes “not wasting food.” Let’s understand together how this potentially lifelong psychological disorder arises.
Dinner party phobia has currently become a hot topic on the internet.
Due to the in-depth reporting by Fuji TV’s morning information program ‘Mezamashi 8’, the symptoms of dinner party phobia and the underlying causes have gained public attention, sparking widespread resonance.
The so-called dinner party phobia is a psychological disorder characterized by an involuntary feeling of fear when dining with others.
This fear should not be underestimated, as it can severely affect an individual’s social life, dating, and work status.
In recent years, the number of consultations regarding dining anxiety has been increasing day by day, which is closely related to Japan’s strict education on “food waste prevention.”
From kindergarten, Japanese children are forced to accept standardized food portions, and any slight deviation in preference or eating speed may attract criticism. This pressure from teachers and peers naturally leads some children to have a shadow over dining with others and mistakenly believe that communal meals are a prompt to “finish quickly.”
A kindergarten in Nagoya, Japan, was identified as abusive after teachers forced four children to eat until they vomited.
In Kuwana City, Mie Prefecture, Japan, a kindergarten was involved in a problematic incident where teachers required children to finish their meals before they could go to the bathroom, resulting in children experiencing incontinence.
A man in his twenties also stated that he was forced to continue eating in the health room during elementary school because he couldn’t finish his nutritious lunch on time.
Such experiences have caused him to still harbor fears about dining with others as an adult.
In his view, having meals with others or even just imagining such situations can cause discomfort symptoms in his body, which is classified as “dinner party phobia.”
Among patients with dinner party phobia, 34.7% believe that being forced to finish a meal is a trigger for the condition.
Among them, 72.1% indicated that they were forced by their teachers to finish their nutritious lunch. The second group consisted of pressure from family members or relatives, and the third was from club teachers.
These data reveal the significant impact of education and social atmosphere on mental health.
There are even examples describing a teacher in a certain country who felt pressured after being criticized by colleagues for having “too much leftover food from the class’s nutritious lunch,” leading to overeating and ultimately developing a fear of dining gatherings.
Surveys show that many people have experienced being forced to eat. A man in his 40s recalled that teachers used to say that students could not leave the classroom if they did not finish their nutritious lunch.
Therefore, sometimes he would deliberately pretend to have finished eating, hiding food in his backpack or drawer, which even led to the food going moldy.
A man in his twenties was forced to eat a large amount of rice in a short period during baseball club training, and now he still prefers to eat slowly at his own pace.
Have you ever experienced being pressured to eat? This pressure may inadvertently affect our daily lives and mental health, and we should remain vigilant about it.
