Sorry - I was eating a chocolate bar - BOO! COUGH!

We just survived National Chocolate Day, a gift to us from the National Confectioners Association. It's so coincidental that Halloween is just around the corner, because that day is often a showcase for United States chocolate consumption (9th highest in the world, at 9.5 lbs per person per year). We lag behind such chocolate noshers as Switzerland (highest global per capita consumption @ 19.8 lbs/person/year) and Australia (7th highest; 10.8 lbs).

Chocolates we will pick up in the grocery checkout line, or we will stop by the specialty store kiosk at the mall, - or perhaps a charity has representatives standing at an intersection near your home, and so you  throw some coins into their bucket and you get a chocolate bar in return....or the kid has just returned from her Halloween candy quest through the neighborhoods, and you feel obliged to inspect the kisses and the mini-bars for poison, popping one or three or twelve into your mouth! Regardless of the source of our great fantasy food, it is easily found and thoroughly enjoyed across ages, genders, cultures and diets. But slow down - you're moving too fast!

"This child is choking to death", said the Doc. When you are young and content to eat a hot dog at the ball park, - but then the adults pull you into the middle of their consternations, - what is a girl like Karin Kinsella to do? Distracted eating, according to the Harvard Health blog(1), not only taxes a person's attention and memory capacity during food/liquid consumption but also limits enjoyment of the meal and the body's ability to digest and use the food as intended. We all do it! Packing a snack, a meal or a quaffing of the beverage of choice into a few minutes here, a few there amidst our busy days - we learn to expect this routine as we look over our personal life, our work life, our leisure existence and our family/circle existence. We eat and drink in chaos, and sometimes at a cost. We eat while driving, we eat while watching TV, while in rapid-fire conversations and engulfed in loud, pounding music. Our swallowing systems have functional reserves that usually allow us the latitude to eat/drink in all those circumstances, and even - as has been described elsewhere - upside down.

For those persons who have had reserves for swallowing function decline and erode, those chocolate noshes may be easy as pie, or as challenging as chewing concrete. Do you struggle to hold the candy in a pincer grasp? Are lips grasping at the bite to keep it within the cavity? Are there enough teeth to grind and pulverize the creamy chunk into a viscous goo for the swallow trigger?? The list of things that can go wrong with CHOCOLATE EATING, is further amplified by everything else happening around the person. TV on; numerous persons attempting to take some of the chocolate for their own; side conversations floating in the air; the anticipation of some activity - bed, if not more activity - following the meal; those SLP's that work in such settings, irregardless of age or physical etiology - they have some work to do.

Control the noise, so that the person served can get reacquainted with their sensory and motor systems through training or compensating to make chocolate eating great again.  The person served can be re acclimated to the natural setting, when both individual and environmental controls are in place to make the eating experience pleasurable. It is a clear road map, to help the person feeding her/himself to enjoy what was National Chocolate Day, anticipate Diwali and brace for Halloween.

"HOW MANY left on base?? Sheesh, give me another Snickers!"

(1) LeWine, Howard, MD, "Distracted Eating May Lead to Weight Gain", Harvard Health Blog. Cambridge MA: Posted 3/29/13.