Kansas City Blog

​It's the slurping. Or that sound like somebody's eating pretzels despite the absence of anything crunchy on their plate. Everybody is annoyed by the eating habits of family members, friends or dinner guests.

The Word of Mouth Blog on The Guardian's Web site has an essay on why we're driven crazy by certain sounds and the lengths to which some people will go to remove those sounds from the dinner table. The first few paragraphs might be enough to send some people over the edge, just from the visualization of this poor person's cubicle mate:

I was mulling this over recently while reading a series of increasingly irate tweets from someone who was being driven slowly mad by a colleague eating apples in his vicinity -- the constant crunching, followed each time by a quick, wet slurpy intake of juice was just too much.

Hormel recently conducted a survey to ask people their biggest eating pet peeves. Of those who responded, 81 percent replied that people chewing with their mouths open was the worst. Loud chewers earned 75 percent of the vote.

Only 25 percent of those surveyed said they were annoyed when someone mixed all their food together instead of eating it separately. So all of you stir-fry enthusiasts can rest easy. Just try to keep your mouth closed and the volume down.