If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.

Hunt wryly observes that food is a universal, low-stakes topic that reliably revives social exchange. The line treats conversation as something that can “flag” like a tired body, and proposes eating—an everyday pleasure and necessity—as an inexhaustible reservoir of anecdotes, preferences, and shared experience. Implicitly, it also satirizes polite society’s dependence on safe commonplaces: when ideas run thin, appetite and taste provide an easy substitute. The remark fits Hunt’s broader reputation as a convivial essayist and critic attentive to the textures of ordinary life, where sociability, comfort, and culture meet at the table.