The great debate: Should you eat on the tube?

The video is uncaptioned. TikTok user @ub1ub2 is speechless. In the clip, a woman eats curry and rice with one hand, and chats on the phone with the other. The comments are divided; some outraged, some indifferent. Hot food, on the tube — can this ever be ok?

The woman is hardly alone. Not long ago, I witnessed a fellow commuter demolishing two steak bakes, a sausage roll and a cake in the space of perhaps four stops. This person was next to me and, after swiping the debris off my lap, I was left pondering whether this was acceptable behaviour or not. I concluded — of course — that food should stay off the tube, especially if it does any of the following: smell, crumble, ooze, melt, pop, squirt, or offend (granted, this last one is perhaps less subjective than the others…).

I was naive enough to believe that this was a fairly universal view until I checked the comments of a video I posted on TikTok, where a seemingly hostile debate was taking place. Londoners are passionate people. The video above explains what those on the street make of it all, but below are both sides of the argument in sum.

“I eat on the tube whenever I want,” says one commuter. And they do have every right to. TfL has a document published named the “TfL Conditions of Carriage”, which explains the house rules — no drinking booze, no smoking, no flash photography, no hoverboards (yes that’s on there) — but there is no mention of food at all. Food is legally allowed to be consumed on TfL services. But still, there are a lot of legal things that are considered rude, like staring, or refusing to give up your chair for an elderly person. This is where our moral compass has to kick in.

In 2019, Dame Sally Davies, who was England’s Chief Medical Officer at the time, recommended in a report that the government made eating on the tube illegal, but no legislation came to light. Hong Kong seem to agree — eating on the tube is outlawed there — while it’s considered very rude in countries such as Japan.

One of the main arguments against tube scoffing is the smell. As one Londoner told the Standard: “We already don’t want to be packed like sardines underground on a moving vehicle, never mind being near someone eating a tuna sandwich and making the whole place stink.”