Q:Gita Chapter 3, Verse 13. Following God’s advice when eating. In this verse of the Bhagwad Gita, God tells us that we should only eat food as remnants (remainder) of a sacrifice. Those who cook food just for themselves are in fact eating sins. What is the practical way to implement this advice from God, for a family man of modern life in everyday practice? What should we do before and/or during eating?

A: You have asked a very nice question, and definitely what Krishna means to say is that if you are eating just to satisfy your hunger, or if you are just eating because there is an urge to eat the food, to give your tongue the pleasure of eating various types of  foods and enjoying different tastes, then Sri Krishna said that you are not eating food but you are eating sins.
So Krishna said that we should offer the food first. What does the word sacrifice mean? Actually it is not sacrifice, it is offering, the right word is offering. What should a family man do? Very simple, when there is food in front of you, if you are being served and you are about to eat your food, then just simply close your eyes. If that is possible, but if you are in a public place and you feel weird, wondering what people are thinking about you, then don’t close your eyes.
Do whatever is suitable, in your heart offer that food to the almighty who lives in you, “O Lord, accept this food and now this food may be partaken by me as your prasad, as your gift to me. As such, we don’t own this body. This body is also an offering which God has given to us, or it is a gift from the Lord to us.  So who are we to eat the food by feeling that I am the eater and I am going to enjoy the food? Always have this thought that this body is not mine and I am not the body; that this body belongs to the almighty and this food has come to me as a blessing of  the Lord. So I offer this food to you.”, and then one should eat. This means it is a method to severely cut out the attachment towards this physical frame.
This is also one way of being humble. People feel proud that they have earned money in a hard way and they are now going to eat this food. They feel, I was the one who had strived and I am the one who is going to enjoy the food. So the ‘I, I, I’ is inflated, and this balloon of ‘I’ needs to be punctured.
So how do we puncture it? By considering that this body is neither me nor mine, but the Lord’s property; whatever energy is working there in your body, is the energy of the Lord. So let the Lord work through this body and let the energy of the food which is again created by nature (we don’t own nature) permeate us.
That is how you should eat food and this food will become very pure, because you will not be the enjoyer of the food, but you will still partake it, your tongue will relish the taste and still you will not be a proud person, thinking how great I am, because I am eating great food. When people go to expensive restaurants, they tell atleast ten of their friends, “Do you know I went to a very expensive restaurant, you don’t get booking there unless there is a good circle of friends who can recommend you, else the waiting list is for six months and I went there.” People feel proud even while eating food.