You race to get a seat on the subway, all set to settle in for a quick catnap. You close your eyes.

CRUNCH. Chomp, chomp, chomp.

Robert Nuebecker

Then you smell it: fried chicken. Or perhaps a greasy slice of pizza or Chinese take-out.

Some guy sitting next to you is scarfing down food, flecks of whatever it is getting all over him, the seat, the floor. It's heading toward you.

You get up, disgusted. How can people eat on the subway? Didn't the local TV station find hepatitis or something on the poles? Isn't this, like, illegal?

Unfortunately, it's not. Consumption of food or drink is prohibited on rail systems in places that may be considered more or less civilized than our own, such as the nation's capital and New Jersey. But on our beloved, 24-hour network of rails, pretty much anything goes. And so you see it all: Coffee, juice, smoothies, meatball heroes, McDonald's Big Macs, you name it.

Just look at the tracks or the overflowing trash bins for evidence. Or train floors, where streaks of spilled coffee and ever-rolling discarded bottles are daily treats. Or check out, a website devoted to: "Exposing subway eaters. One mouthful at a time."

"Any form of food or drink, I think is a definite no, no," said Philip Stevenson, a 34-year-old Brit who like many others finds the rampant underground eating in New York extremely distasteful. "It's like taking your food and drink into a toilet. You just don't do that."

There is hope. A bill that would ban eating on the subway was introduced in Albany last week. The proposal resurrects the perennial debate that reared its head last year after a video of a fistfight sparked by a woman eating spaghetti on the subway went viral on the Internet.

Back then, former Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Jay Walder said a ban was not practical. This time, the MTA has yet to weigh in. A spokesman said it is reviewing the legislation.

The point of the bill, sponsored by state Sen. Bill Perkins, is to reduce the subway's rampant rat population.

I wasn't always so particular about subway snacking, but when a chorizo sandwich I was carrying in a take-out bag landed on a man's trench coat, I was nearly as horrified as he was.

Now I feel somewhat dirty even bringing take-out home on the subway, let alone eating it there.

So I can get behind a ban. And many of the commuters I spoke with seemed to think it was a good idea, too.

In fact, some says there is a need to go further—to ban drinks, so we can avoid stepping into sticky spills.

This may be a more difficult sell. On several recent mornings, I found coffee to be the most common food or drink item. Iced coffee, hot coffee, coffee in thermoses, coffee in plastic cups. New Yorkers like their java.

It seems so innocent but, oh, it's not. One woman's coffee thermos clung to a pole she was holding, the lip touching the subway light. Gross. Another man sipped standing up while simultaneously reading "The Satanic Verses," his coffee seeping out as the subway lurched around a corner.

The straw sippers seemed to fare better.

As for those eating, the guilty, for the most part, were chowing down on something relatively benign. A bagel. A breakfast sandwich. An apple. (Eating the substantive stuff, it seems, is more of a post-drinking-binge sort of thing).

Eric Burnside Sr. , a 48-year-old of the Bronx, sat at the 49th Street and Seventh Avenue subway station eating a bagel. He said he doesn't usually eat on the subway and would welcome making it illegal. "The subways and buses, they're disgusting," he said.

At the West Fourth Street station, Gustavo Biris was eating an egg and cheese croissant. Mr. Biris, a Bensonhurst resident, said he eats on the subway all the time. But for him, it's a necessity. He's in the construction trade and his job takes him from the far reaches of one borough to another. Can you really blame the guy?

Still, he said if it were illegal, he would be fine with eating his lunch outside. "It's OK, if they say that," he said.

There are some who don't object to eating or drinking, per se, just the sloppiness of some individuals.

Mackenzie Luzzi, a 24-year-old Brooklyn resident, doesn't think a ban would accomplish anything. She just thinks people should be more conscientious or perhaps there should be trash receptacles onboard.

"I don't mind if people eat on the subway, or drink, and I fairly often have a coffee," she said. "Just please don't break out your full meal."

She recalled an instance a few weeks ago when a woman next to her "loudly and disgustingly attacked her yogurt." After she was done eating, she left the container on the floor between her legs, and then walked away without it.

"If you eat like a monkey, I don't want you sitting next to me and leaving your sloppy mess behind," she said.

There is no bigger cheerleader for ending chomping on the subway than MTA board member Charles Moerdler, who supports testing the concept with a pilot program offering some leeway for candy bars and the like.

"It's dirty, it stinks and it doesn't help people at all," he said.

And what about diabetics or those who may medically need a sugar fix, Mr. Moerdler asks, ready for opponents' arguments.

"That's true, but you don't need a three-course Chinese meal to do that," he said.

Mr. Moerdler has had his own distasteful brushes with subway eaters (though he says his support of a ban is largely based on the rat and refuse problems). He was on the subway a few months ago, heading to Times Square to meet with a client. Someone standing next to him was eating.

"I don't know what the heck he was eating, all I know is when I came out of the subway I had all kinds of guck all over me," he recalled. "It was an awful-looking substance. I think it was probably some sort of mayonnaise."

He apologized to his client and the jacket went right to the dry cleaners.

Not everyone supports a crackdown on subterranean noshing.

"It's important" to be able to eat, said Charles, who declined to give his last name while munching on an apple as he waited the subway in Queens. "We're New Yorkers. We do everything on the go."

And Rob Code, a 42-year-old, said his family grabs bagels and orange juice as they make the long trek to the north Bronx from Union Square for swim meets.

Furthermore, he remembers his daughter frequently snacking on the train when she was a toddler. "I can't imagine preventing someone from doing that," he said.

MTA conductor Guy Goodman, too, says he doesn't think a ban would be fair. But you won't find Mr. Goodman, who was directing commuters at the 53rd Street/Lexington stop, engaging in any underground eating. Oh, no.

"The air down here," he said, "it's not the best to have around your food."

You got that right.