CHICAGO, July 29 – On a Sunday morning at a Roman Catholic church here, Mary Hallan Fiorito glanced at a nearby pew to see a woman drinking a can of Coke at Mass. At a musical in a Broadway theater, Alex Wang turned to the row behind him to discover people eating corn on the cob. In schools that once forbade chewing gum, students now bring doughnuts and candy to class – along with chewing gum.

Americans seem to be eating all the time, and wherever they please.

“Consumers now see eating as something to be done while you do something else,” said Bobby Calder, a marketing professor at Northwestern University. “Everybody wants to save time by multitasking. So you don’t just sit down and eat. You eat while you work, while you’re watching TV, while you drive. ”

The automobile, among the favorite places for people to snack, is well on its way to becoming a rolling dining room. A car is scarcely considered worth driving now without cup holders in the front and back. Some cars now have refrigerated glove-boxes. And within the next six months, the Samsung Corporation plans to market the first microwave for cars and minivans. The microwave will plug into the cigarette lighter.

(THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL FRIDAY, JULY 30, 1999)

According to the passage, Mary Hallan Fiorito