The meal eaten standing up still required a body that deserved somewhere to sit.

Eating on your feet, between other things, is still eating, and the body doing it deserved a chair. The meal counted; the conditions were poor. Treating that as normal for long enough makes it stop registering as a deprivation at all, which is precisely the problem.

So notice how often it happens in a week. Not to feel bad about the ones that were necessary, but to see whether the standing meal has quietly become the default. Sitting down for ten minutes is a small correction with an effect out of proportion to its size, and it is usually available even on days that feel like they have no room in them.