I respectfully disagree with your premise that one can experience "the pure pleasure of eating" while thoughtfully discussing "any number of topics".

What gave you that idea !!! :1rotfl:
Yep, definitely my favorite food !! ;)

I love spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread and a tossed salad but not Italian dressing. I like poppy seed. That is my favorite meal.

Yum, love spaghetti and lasagna. I should have been Italian. ;)

I remember a Thanksgiving dinner with family where there was a lot of good food. As a matter of fact, there was way too much good food. "Good" meaning good tasting.

What I remember most, after all these years, was my brother trying to stop his wife from pigging out on mashed potatoes and gravy. She had taken about 3 helpings and was going for helping number 4. She was no longer hungry but just couldn't stop herself.

And the rest of us were complaining about how stuffed we were too. Holidays often bring out the worst behaviors when it comes to eating.

I remember the way we ate on Thanksgiving. My mom would have dinner at 3:00. After we'd be so stuffed. We would gather in the living room, watching movies on TV, with some of us taking a nap. About 7:30 - 8:00, we'd start pulling food out of the fridge and start nibbling. Like we needed more. LOL

Holidays also often bring the most wonderful, emotional, bonding memories!

But the bonding won't happen unless people stuff themselves with high calorie processed foods, right?

Villages PL, didn't your grandmother ever tell you that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar? Anyway, one of my favorite holiday memories around food was having my grandfather peel the orange in my stocking for me. He did it in one long amazing spiral. I can still smell that wonderful scent.

Actually holiday meals and Sunday meals were definitely about stuffing ourselves & I loved it. Can't do it quite as much now, but sure loved it then !!! :)

Our family's definately was. Lots of food and drink. Unfortunately family get togethers are spread far and thin since familys seem to spread out through the years.

To paraphrase a beautiful lady -- Boy Howdy!

My Mom and I were talking a couple of weeks ago while I was in Louisiana about how she use to bring my late Dad and I plate lunches while we were ginning cotton 40+ years ago in Arkansas. It really brought back a lot of good memories. Most of those memories involved her cooking and the incredible meals she made, my Dad and I raising all of the vegetables in the garden; it's no wonder I was a 250lb. chunky butt then (now a little lighter at 190). Ahh, the good old days.

Wrong. It's very true that food is often part of happy memories. Nothing wrong with bonding over a meal.
However, in the "olden" days, there wasn't a lot of processed food, but lots of good food, including vegetables!
And some people stuffed themselves with high calorie food and some did not. :shrug:
However bonding can certainly occur during cards or charades or singing around the piano as we used to do. Or in the afterglow of a camp fire.