Do you eat your peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the jelly facing up or down? Think, and try not to obsess over this quandary or it may just drive you as mad as it has me.

Let me begin by explaining that I have begun eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again after, I don’t know, decades. I find that one makes a palatable breakfast on those mornings when I’m rushing to the gym and have no time or inclination for a hot meal but need sustenance in my belly. We are talking about the basic food-shove maneuver.

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John Kessler writes food features and a column about food and more for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution E-mail John Kessler Recent Kessler columns Your fool-proof checklist for Thanksgiving  Hours of low-temperature cooking yield tender, juicy meat  Different things to sample on my new dining menu         More John Kessler Related: John Kessler's blog: Food & More John Kessler's recipes Meridith Ford Goldman's Table Talk Jeanne Besser's Feeding Frenzy Evening Edge Atlanta Restaurant reviews and search Recipes from Atlanta restaurants Favorite Atlanta recipes

But no matter how rushed I am, I will always flip the sandwich if the first bite starts with the jelly on the bottom. I am usually neither obsessive nor compulsive about what I eat. Normally if the food isn’t moving — or at least not struggling — I’m happy to eat it any which way. Yet when it comes to PB&J, I discovered, the peanut butter must be on the bottom, and the jelly on top.

Because of this strange behavioral tic, I began to postulate theories about it. Since taste buds are on the tongue, then the peanut butter goes on the underside so I can taste it first. Right?

That would make sense, except that I’m all about the jelly. The peanut butter is the gluey, palate-coating source of nutrition that the stomach wants for ballast, while the jelly — once it makes its inevitable connection with the taste buds — sparkles brightly with sugar and acid, and it renders the mind very happy to be engaged in the act of eating.

Maybe it’s a question of relative weights. Peanut butter is dense while jelly is nimble enough to jiggle. Heavier ingredients should be closer to the tongue, don’t you think?

Well, no, if you consider pizza. Airy crust + thick shellacking of cheese = yum, yum, yum.

No closer to an answer, I began to consider other potentially bi-directional foods to see if there was a clear case-by-case default.

I couldn’t think of one off the bat. Most foods, other than sandwiches, are constructed in such a way that if you turn them upside down, they end up in your lap. Even some sandwiches. I don’t know about you, but I, for one, will never eat an upside-down hoagie.

But maybe that was my answer. The stodgy, starchy ingredient is always the vehicle that transports exciting, flavorful ingredient from hand to mouth. Cheese and crackers. Chips and salsa. Canapés.

That seemed the final answer to the peanut-butter-and-jelly dilemma until I thought about sushi, which always tastes better when the fish is resting against the tongue and the rice is cupped by the roof of your mouth. This is particularly appealing when the rice is a little warmer than the fish.

So I’m back to ground zero, with no clear idea why the jelly has to be on top other than it just does, axiomatically. Here is where I remain stuck in my thoughts. The PB&J’s other great dichotomies — creamy or chunky, strawberry or grape, whole-wheat or white — will just have to wait.

• Trader Joe’s — the grocer that specializes in unusual and value-priced convenience foods — will open its latest Atlanta store Oct. 24 at 3183 Peachtree Road in Buckhead. You can stop by anytime after 9 a.m. for festivities and food samples.