Most days, Ellen Yack eats breakfast or lunch in the car. The 47-year-old occupational therapist packs grilled chicken and fruit for herself, and sandwiches and wraps for her kids. But she confesses to sometimes "grabbing a package of salami they eat in the back seat and I don't make sandwiches or anything. Can you believe it?"
It's a familiar scene according to Jim Robinson, vice-president of NPD Canada, a branch of an international market research company. "A three-year-old can spend 40 minutes on a bowl of cereal," he says. "That's why sales of cereal bars and convenience foods are growing. Time-pressed parents can throw something in their kid's hand and say, 'Eat this, and we're on our way.' "
The car, with its built-in DVD player, surround sound and reclining seats, with its outlets for electric shavers, seats that become tables and now, built-in coolers, has become a portable home (the term is "carcooning"). Indeed, a recent NPD study found that one in 10 meals is eaten in the car. Whatever you want to call it -- "one-handed dining," "carfasting," "cup-holder cuisine" -- it paints a picture of a time- (and home-cooking) starved nation.
Robinson says 27 per cent of fast-food meals are now bought at a drive-through, up from 11 per cent in 1993. "Changes like this don't happen overnight," he adds. "As disposable income has grown, need for convenience has grown."
Working people are fuelling this trend: Sixty per cent of car dining is by people 25 to 49. And women dominate the market share at 55 per cent. Robinson thinks the reason for that is that working mothers rely on cars to manage busy schedules. The most-consumed car items are coffee, French fries, hamburgers and ice cream. And even though she tries to avoid junk food, Yack admits: "I do do tubes," referring to the tubes of yogurt that are popular with school-agers.
What is all this K-ration eating doing to the idea of what a meal should be? Food and cultural historians Jane and Michael Stern, who wrote the cookbook Square Meals, say that since the Pilgrims, the ideal North American meal has been made up of a protein, a form of starch, greens and dessert. No matter what else is happening, it makes the world seem better.
And according to Margaret Visser, author of The Rituals of Dinner and this year's Massey lectures, "Eating together, that is, sharing meals, is the basis of civilization."
The car meal represents the abomination of an ideal: A sense of personal space, and purpose, is articulated by the conventional table with its place settings and chairs. Eating in the car circumvents the idea that people are meant to share meals face to face.
"I can't tell you how many times I am asked, why is it we're not having meals on Sunday any more?" Visser says. "People think barbarism is breaking in on them. In fact, everything depends on why that person is eating the meal in their car."
For as long as the dinner table has distinguished us from animals, she points out, human beings have had the option -- and often took it -- of eating on the run. "Think about armies," she says. "A person may have a very good reason for eating in the car." And she points out that a lonely meal can be a relished one too.
"I suppose it is entirely possible for someone to say, 'I am so appreciative of this yogurt in a tube.' " Although, she says, "chances are they're treating themselves not as a soul, but as a machine, like putting oil in the car."
Eating on the run is, in fact, changing the very meaning of a meal. "Meals are morphing into snacks, snacks are morphing into meals," says Jerry Tutunjian, the editor of the food trade's Canadian Grocer. Things that are easy to hold and don't make a mess fuel grocery sales: In the past year, sales of energy bars and drinks were up 59 per cent, meat sticks 35 per cent, and rice and corn cakes 25 per cent.
"People talk a lot about nutrition," Tutunjian says. "But convenience is the most sought-after asset in this case. Many so-called energy bars are actually just glamorized candy." And demand is created by what is available at the convenience store, the industry's current "hot locale."
Yack sees eating in the car as a means to an end -- an aspect of life that isn't pretty, perhaps, but her family still has dinner together most of the time. It makes the car seem less precious too. "If I have to eat on the way, so be it. I'm not prideful of my car."
For many people, the car is an "extension of personality," says John Healy, GM Canada's director of product planning. "It's a large investment -- you spend a lot of hours in it. You want it to be comforting and soothing. If it is, it's going to be an inviting place to eat."
GM's Yukon XL has a removable cooler, and its new Vibe has an outlet to plug in the razor. On the other hand, Healy says the company worries more about safety than about going after the trend.
In fact, a 2001 report by the American Automobile Association indicates that more serious or fatal car accidents are caused by eating or drinking in the car (1.7 per cent) than by cellphone use (1.5 per cent). (On the other hand, adjusting the radio or CD player was deemed the cause in 11.4 per cent.) When fast-food franchises arrived in the 1960s, Healy says, people parked to eat.
"In Europe, the position is that people shouldn't eat and drink in vehicles," Healy says. "If you think about it, you get a takeout cup, you drive out of a drive-through, and then you want to set it down and open the top. You can imagine if you have to stop quickly and it spills."
He sees it as a safety issue. "If they're going to drink, how to make that safer?" he says. "We started putting cup holders in back in 1986, when drive-throughs started to open up."
Since then, the emphasis has been on developing beverage holders. Many European cars, like the Saab, don't have them at all -- but they've been adapted to North America's market.
Many look to the Tim Hortons bagel, introduced in 1996, as a tipping point for car food -- taking it from the junk food provided by the franchises into the realm of regular eating. "We're no longer blue-collar, male-skewed," says Patti Jameson, Tim Hortons' vice-president of corporate communications. "We're very much white-collar, male/female, young/old."
Bagels -- one of the top five car foods -- are takeout for any time of day, and Tim's sells one of every two in Canada. Thanks to new technology, it takes them less than a minute to toast and serve a bagel. Jameson thinks they're popular with drivers because of the way they're cut: in half horizontally and in quarters, "so you've got a nice small piece to deal with."
But coffee is still the most popular item consumed in the car. Meagan Davies, 27, drives to work every day from St. Catharines to Tim Hortons' head office in Oakville, a trip that lasts the length of a cup -- of tea, in her case. "It's what gets me there," she says. The time alone also gives her time to think. Such rituals and familiar habits may be an instinctive human response to a busy world. "When you think about it, it's not so crazy," Visser says, "because it's a ritual, and ritual expresses belief."
I tell her about my brother, whose workday involves a lot of driving. Every day, he drives to the same parking lot to eat lunch in his car. He regularly sees three other people doing the same thing. None of them has ever spoken. Of this ritual, Visser laughs. "That's terrible!" she says. "Tell him to go knock on a window."