Second person (F5) eating animation suggestion

In the first-person view, the eating animation is perfectly fine, but in the second-person, the only thing that shows someone is eating is particles flying off of the in-hand food item. I have a rather simple suggestion for an eating animation for others to see, that would still look vanilla:

If you play 1.8, you know what block hitting looks like. It's kinda like you are stabbing your face with a long blade. Replace the sword texture with a potato, and BAM, you've got a great second person eating animation :D

In other words, the suggested animation makes it look like you are eating the food, and it looks perfectly normal as the animation already exists.