In the past there was an injunction against eating at your computer. Everybody knew food and drink could cause terrible tragedies to your computer.

Perhaps in the past, this was indeed justified. Old computers used to work with an operating system on a cassette or a diskette, and these were easily damaged. The first diskettes were partially exposed. Any spill could destroy them. Keyboards used to be expensive. Some of the original keyboards were built into the computer as a single unit. The whole computer was rendered unusable if the keyboard was damaged.

However, today’s computers are different. New keyboards are cheap.

Today’s operating system is protected inside the computer, and it’s unlikely that anybody will intentionally damage the computer by pouring damaging materials into it.

Go ahead, eat by your desktop computer.

When considering the various positive and negative aspects of drinking or eating near the computer, the pleasure of using the computer far outweighs the negative aspects caused by the potential damage.

Yes, there are other possibilities. It could spill on the speakers and damage them, but they’re also cheap.

Yes, you could spill a drink on other components, but it is no more dangerous than eating next to certain other appliances in the house - and you wouldn’t think twice about eating there, would you?

Of course, we did omit one factor. It is healthy for you to get up from your computer from time to time. It is an ergonometrically sound recommendation. When you nosh at the computer, you may not notice how much are are eating, and you (but not the computer) may develop some concomitant physical problems. Perhaps for that reason it is good to keep the food away from the computer.