Many narcissists have bizarre behaviours around food, this manifests in a number of ways. They can:
- Serve themselves more than everyone else at a shared meal.
- Track the size of everyone else’s portions if they are not doing the serving themselves.
- Grab a tasty morsel of someone else’s plate if they feel like it, especially if the person is saving the best till last, they will swoop down at the last moment and say “Oh I thought you didn’t like it and were leaving it” if challenged, most people are too surprised to challenge them or say “I was doing you a favour, you are getting too fat, you should be grateful to me”
- Outside of meal time they can hoard or hide food
- They will expect visitors and their children to ask “permission” from them to have a glass of water, make a cup of tea or take a second biscuit. While they will help themselves liberally to anything they want.
- They will often hog a bottle of wine by their side to ensure that they get the lion’s share and that anyone else who wants some has to ask them to pass it on, they consider this “permission” even if it is not in their own house
- Stuff food quickly into their mouth so that no one else can see how much they have eaten (will sometimes use their hands so that they can shovel food into their mouth faster)
- They can go to the fridge in someone else’s house and help themselves to any delicacy they might find without asking and will often take it home with them “for later”
- They can use providing food as a means of purchase of supply and will be deeply offended if a guest doesn’t profusely compliment every dish provided (they have little or no time for guests with special dietary needs)
- When buying food for their family, if the narcissist doesn’t like a specific food type it doesn’t get bought “We don’t like …”.
- A narcissistic parent can cook the favourite dishes of their golden child and completely ignore the likes of the others
- Insist that they have specific dietary needs (even when it is not true) such as being a vegan or celiac when invited out to make sure that more effort is made of them than other guests but can happily eat meat or grains when no one is around to see them
- They can withhold food such as packed lunches or an evening meal if they want to express displeasure about the behaviour of a family member
The reason for these types of behaviour is because food is an excellent tool for control. Food like “love”, money and attention is an essential resource and that is exactly why the narcissist wants to dominate who gets what. It is also a good means of letting people know who is in favour and who is not by the size of portions or the effort put in to creating a meal.
In every culture people eat to celebrate “togetherness”, whether that is a family, a society, a club or a group of friends, it is what people do to nurture the bonding of the group and the more effort/celebration that is put into creating a meal the stronger the bond grows. It is why people get very offended if they are not invited to participate in celebratory meals. Instinctively we know it means “you are not considered an important person in our group”, which is why so many narcissists are determined to control who gets what food, it means that they can dominate the pecking order. The leader of any pack, pride or herd in the wild will always get to eat first and the others will have to vie for their position in the ranking order. Bliss for any narcissist because it will feel like everyone else is fighting amongst themselves to get closer to him/her.
Narcissists do not like to share because it implies that they are on a par with everyone else and they firmly believe that they are superior. So any food that you receive from a narcissist is, in their minds, a purchase. Feeding their children is a purchase of ownership and feeding non family members is a purchase of attention or admiration. If they are not purchasing with food they would prefer that it went rotten and threw it away instead of give it away.
They are infantile about food like they are about everything else and will frequently hurriedly shove food into their mouths at a buffet, or actually rage or complain if they see someone has been given more than they have. This childish display is to ensure that they get preferential treatment the next time and this in their mind is a “win” and a display to them that they are indeed at the top of the pecking order.