Arlington, Virginia
The reader writes:
Palestinian mujaddara (lentils and rice with caramelized onions) — and a good book.
Heh. Flattery will get you everywhere, or at least onto VFYT. I read compulsively while I eat, unless someone else is at the table with me. Who else here does?
scotch meg says: I have books scattered around the house, so I’m never more than a few feet away from one. My oldest and youngest sons are the same. Sadly, dh, middle son, and daughters… don’t. Or maybe not sadly, since they do make us put ours away and talk to them. 
Conor Dugan says: I tend to print articles longer than a few paragraphs out and will read those as I eat — when no one else is around and even sometimes when folks are!
Mike Ramsey says: Lovely, however the view would be much improved with the addition of some crispy smoked thick-sliced bacon from a heritage hog.
Lord Karth says: If the family’s at the dinner table, books are verboten. If it’s just me….well, you’d be surprised at the size of the pile of reading matter I bring with me.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
Sands says: I need a pinch of snuff when I read. Cannot comprehend words without it.
I need a cocktail when I write around here, which is obvious. And on top of this, I’m using a touch keyboard.
Did I make it with no errors? Because it has been horridious here lately. But I ramble. But no, I don’t eat, I spit in a empty Dr. Pepper bottle and hope my wife doesn’t grab it by accident.
stillaninterestedobserver says: Oh man, to NOT have something to read if I am eating alone is simply a travesty.
James C. says: I don’t compulsively read while I eat. I compulsively eat while I read! It’s a very bad habit.
I used to. Often. CS Lewis wrote in Suprised by Joy that eating while reading was one of his greatest pleasures.. I marked that, because about ten years ago one of my best friends, and Italian, caught me doing it, and reacted like he’d caught me masturbating or something. He dressed me down so hard for not paying attention to my food, that I could – and have never – done it since. I have to say I think he is right. Both pleasures are so fine, and so sacred, they ought not be mixed. One must give his full attention to what is at hand.
Incidentally, another Italian friend of mine, the wife of my best American friend, saw her father in law (an Irish American from Rhode Island) putting salt and pepper on his food without having tasted it first, and made such fun of him behind his back that she converted me on that point to..
Rack it all up to my pathological sense of cultural inferiority, but when it comes to eating, you should never scorn Italian advice.
Mark says: Reading at my desk while I eat lunch at work is my sacred time.
Naturalmom says: ME! Like stillaninterestedobserver, I feel great disappointment if I stop at a restaurant and realize I don’t have anything to read. My husband is not a big reader. If he’s around I try to put the book down or at least be open to setting it aside if he tries to start a conversation. He just doesn’t understand the experience of being absorbed in a good book. Our daughter is a voracious reader and always has a book at the table. I’m in total agreement with having her put it away if others are at the table with her, but he wanted the rule to be no reading at the table at all! I had to step in and object to that. *I* wasn’t willing to abide by it, nor was I willing to enforce it on her when he wasn’t around. So now I have a child carrying on the tradition. 
Leapold says: It started in childhood. I used to read the cereal boxes or the phone book at breakfast.
I know they say one should eat mindfully, but I don’t want to just think about the food I’m eating–I want to enjoy it, and that happens better with a book.
Joanna says: Guilty.
David J. White says: I have a good friend who told me that when she was growing up, it was customary in her family for everyone to be reading at the dinner table, even when they were having dinner together as a family. She said that her mother used to call them all to dinner by saying, “Dinner is ready! Bring your books!”. And they would all sit around the family dinner table, each individually reading while eating. She once asked me what I like to read at dinner when I was growing up. When I told her that we weren’t allowed to read at the family dinner table because that was considered time for us to talk together as a family, she looked at me with puzzled incomprehension; evidently in her eyes I had a weird upbringing.
When I’m eating alone, I usually read the paper, or news sites on my cell phone; nothing too involving.
Sands says: Oh btw, that post above was the result of a drinking game involving several blogs, an iPhone and fifty or more words. I won hands down.
Sadly, my lifelong compulsive reading-while-eating now means all too many meals in front of the computer screen. But hey, it’s a great opportunity to catch up on your blog!