When I look back on my research career, one thing that stands out over the years is a particular sensation deep within – a nagging, pressing imperative that preys on your innards. It’s so subtle that you can sense it only during the rare idle moments that punctuate otherwise endless stretches of adrenalin-fuelled activity: leaning against the centrifuge, say, waiting those final few seconds for the rotor to swish to a stop and the lid-lock to release with a satisfying clank; resting your forehead against the plexiglass shield of the tissue culture hood, watching the hypnotic dribble of your pink medium through the membrane of the vacuum filter device; zoning out as you rub a frozen tube between your hands, trying to speed up the thawing of its contents.
Snacks: should be budgeted into the lab grant
What is this urge? It’s not the desire to succeed, to win the Nobel, to cure cancer, to get your paper in Nature. It’s not even the desire to make the world a better place. No, it’s hunger. And I don’t mean hunger in an aesthetic, I’d-quite-fancy-a-honey-roasted-chicken-sandwich-with-aioli-and-pesto kind of way. I’m talking nutrition. Enough nutrition, specifically, to make it through the day (and night, if applicable) without passing out and being discovered by the cleaners lying on the floor in a wild tangle of lab coat and electrophoresis leads at 6 a.m.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I often find myself not eating for long periods at the lab. This wasn’t such an issue in the editorial office; I’d work intently at my desk, snacking as needed. But in a lab, you have to make a definitive break: remove your gloves, wash your hands, locate your wallet and seek out that carbon source – overall, an activation energy barrier that sometimes proves too high to overcome.
I have to say that my current building is woefully underequipped. I’m a salty snack kind of girl, and the only sustenance provided in the Common Room besides coffee, tea and an array of sweet or chocolatey items is a small basket of Mini-Cheddar packets, usually decimated like a gazelle carcass on the savannah by 3 PM. There’s no vending machine and no canteen. Of course UCL is situated around hundreds of cafés and delis, but that would require actually leaving the building altogether (see above). I miss trekking to the basement for an icy-cold can of Coke, or dithering between ten different forms of fluorescent orange, processed cheese-inspired items, or – best of all – trying to decide which plastic-wrapped sandwich on the multilayered refrigerated carousel is least likely to be infected with Salmonella.
I’m not the only one obsessed by this topic. As a community service, one researcher rated all the many vending machines in his building, which includes the Vendtastic Burger Machine, the Junk Food Machine and the Fridge of Destiny.
I can only dream of such riches.
Nuts in a tub. Being re-sealable, you can return to them again and again.
Or move into plant research and graze on your failed experiments.
Oh, but then you’d miss the thrill of the fresh foil packet, newly breached, when all the cheese-oid molecules are still in their prime…
Besides, laying in snacks would require me being organized.
Dear Jen,
I wonder if you fall into the category of people who “forget to have lunch”. One of my colleagues here is very prone to this. It is only a problem, for me, when I have arranged to have lunch with him. Some time after 2:30pm he might turn up. I have already eaten my sandwich, all my fruit, had my coffee and biscuits otherwise….
In contrast, I can’t even understand the concept of forgetting to have lunch. I am reminded to eat by various things:
my stomach – which growls
my brain – which shuts down
anybody who meets me when I am hungry – “you wouldn’t like me when I am hungry….”
Hope all is well in London.
Best wishes,
Paul
Hi Paul, it’s been ages. In fact I distinctly remember you pulling me away from the bench for lunch several times back in the mists of time…
Yes, I’m afraid I’m one of these forget-to-eat types. It’s as if mental stimulation overrides the hunger center — I simply don’t register the need until I’ve stopped doing whatever is preoccupying me. But leave me at home on a lazy weekend and I’m thinking about eating every two seconds!
The Fridge of Destiny sounds fab.
I think you need your own private supply. How about a card with packets of nuts on them, like you get in pubs, on the inside of your labcoat?
(Or should I set up a website like this one offering relatives of scientists the opportunity to send food parcels to their loved ons in labs?)
My mind reels at the possibility of getting genuine American snacks shipped in (with or without the Inner Labcoat Lining Dispenser Option [ILLDO])! That’s priceless. Put me on the full Cheetos/Combos/Bugels/Cheese-Puffs/Parmesan-Flavored-Goldfish subscription and I’m yours for life.
Parmesan-Flavored-Goldfish
Truly, that’s genetic modification gone mad.
Ah, but with its sublime taste, it is surely the queen of all Processed Cheese Food Snacks (PCFS).
Reading down the list of warm, brown water on the coffee machine merely yards away from my desk, each legend – coffee, cappucino, cappucino ‘special’ (whatever that is), chocolate, etc, each with its attendant button -one finally gets to the button which, with disarming finality, reads ‘vend’.
I have not come across ‘vend’ in such a stark form before (though it is listed as a transitive verb in the OED) but somehow it puts me in mind of Keats, viz.
‘to vend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees/ And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core’
and more poignantly, Tennyson:
‘Though much is taken, much abides,
and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are: one equal temper of heroic hearts made weak by time and fate but strong in will to strive, to seek, to vend, but not to yield’.
All that guff notwithstanding, I am minded that there is a remote geological period, immediately before the Cambrian, called the Vendian (which does not feature in the OED).
During this period, the first creatures evolved which were conveniently snack-sized (rather than too small to see with the naked eye). But these creatures were swept away in a mass-extinction, after which a different suite of creatures evolved, armed with all kinds of jointed limbs, spines and fearsome mouthparts. Perhaps the creatures of the Vendian became snacks for their Cambrian successors, explaining the origin of all those limbs, spines and so on. In which case the word ‘vend’ on the Nature coffee machine assumes a dark, eldritch, dare I say even chthonic significance.
Wonderful, Henry.
In a point not nearly as erudite, I must point out that on our Institute’s brown hot water machine, black coffee is called ‘cafe creme’.
Why? ‘Tis a mystery that science has utterly failed to explain.
That’s odd – I thought I posted a comment urging Henry to post that comment to a wider audience (lablit, f’rex), and it hasn’t turned up.
Perchance you previewed rather than submitted? That’s got me a few times. She admits shamefacedly.
I suspect that is the case.
I’ve always suspected the Vendii were a class of ascetic Roman guards, but I think Henry’s take is better.
In my case, I think a better button label would be ‘resuscitate’.