Taste: Surprising Stories and Science About Why Food Tastes Good (60 page)

Our lives move so fast. We speed through meals that poor people in developing nations would consider a king’s feast. We consume more calories between home and the office, while absentmindedly talking on our cell phones, than many people in the world eat in an entire day. We eat while rushing around, and this causes us to eat mindlessly.

Stan Frankenthaler, the James Beard Award–nominated chef, from the chapter on umami, now heads up culinary development at Dunkin’ Donuts, the quintessential American doughnut shop. His job is to create delicious new menu items that Dunkin’ Donuts can sell in their stores. In keeping with the way Americans eat nowadays, Dunkin’ has put drive-through windows in many of its stores. Frankenthaler recognizes the limitations of the quick-serve restaurant format. One of his biggest challenges is getting people to think about the food they eat while driving away: “How, when they’re running through the drive-through, are you going to get them to stop, for even just a second, and go, ‘Wow, that tastes really good’?”

While eating meals mindlessly, we absorb the calories, but we don’t absorb the full pleasure they offer. If you ask why we eat this way, we’re hard-pressed to explain the real reasons. Who doesn’t want to get more pleasure out of the same amount of food? It’s the dieter’s dream, the hedonist’s heaven, a parent’s paradise. And all it takes is slowing down.

If you could experience “sensory truths you never suspected,” wouldn’t you be game? Well, all you have to do is consider each meal a tantric opportunity. If we apply the principles of Tantrism, this would mean that each meal would be stretched out to provide maximum pleasure without pursuit of a goal—for example, finishing—in mind. Why in the world would you want to finish a meal, anyway? It’s one of the very few hedonistic, sensual experiences that don’t involve dangerous sex, drugs, or alcohol. (Whoops. Dinner should always include wine.) Wouldn’t you rather be eating than not eating? If yes, then try to make your meals last a little bit longer. There’s research that proves there’s something to this.

A Dutch study set out to determine if the speed of consumption of a meal affects how satiated you are at the end of it. The researchers created a menu with four courses. Course one: a lettuce salad with mozzarella, tomato, croutons, and dressing. Course two: macaroni with tomato-meat sauce. Course three: a layered vegetable torta. Course four: a raspberry pudding. Total calories: about 500.

Before they could conduct their survey, they had to control each subject’s food consumption before he or she arrived for the experiment. If you were trying to learn about the lunch choices subjects would make during the experiment, it would not be scientifically sound to start with two people who had eaten vastly different breakfasts. Someone who’s just breakfasted on Moons Over My Hammy at Denny’s (970 calories, including hash browns) will probably respond to lunch differently from someone who’s eaten only a banana and a Diet Coke (121 calories if the banana is big). So they instructed all their subjects to drink the same breakfast shake the morning before the experiment.

The researchers brought the diners into the lab and fed them the four-course meal in two vastly different ways. But in both cases the subjects all ate the same amount of calories. The first group of human guinea pigs was fed slowly: their meal stretched out over two hours, with twenty-to thirty-minute breaks between the courses, similar in pacing to a nice restaurant meal. The second group was given thirty minutes to eat the entire four courses; this pace is, sadly, similar in terms of style and timing to the majority of meals we eat in our lifetime. The researchers also measured the levels of appetite-regulating hormones before and after the meal.

After those in the experiment ate their 500-calorie meal, the ones whose courses were separated by breaks rated their desire for food lower than those who ate all of their four courses at once within thirty minutes. Slowing down and eating in a more regimented manner made their post-meal
wanting
lower. This finding is something to celebrate. We are in control of the satisfaction we get
from food! All it takes is being present in the moment, paying attention to your food, and eating—enjoying—your food more slowly and more methodically.

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the study. The researchers uncovered a troubling finding in the second half of the test, which says a lot about our contemporary culture. Later, when both test groups were presented with a smorgasbord of waffles, chocolate-coated marshmallows, cakes, peanuts, and salty potato chips, both groups continued to eat despite their previous rating and whether they ate quickly or slowly. After the participants had ingested their 500-calorie meal, whether they’d eaten it all at once or slowly over two hours, they both ate
the exact same amount
after the test. The subjects in the “slow and satisfied group” ignored their lowered desire for food when it was presented to them practically on a golden platter.

Herein lies the rub. Food is everywhere. It is presented to us on golden platters at work, school, cultural events, social events, birthday parties, and more. It is hard to go anywhere in the developed world without encountering delicious food. What you should do is an internal gut check to determine if your wanting for food is physical or situational, and in lieu of those cupcakes, remember your last meal, how it smelled, looked, sounded, felt, and tasted. And take a pass.

Cornell University’s Brian Wansink is dubious about advice to eat mindfully. He has said, “When I talk about mindless eating, some people erroneously say, ‘Then the secret to solving mindless eating is to eat mindfully.’ No, not if you’re ninety-five percent of the population. To eat half of a pea and ask, ‘Am I full yet?’ may work for some people. And I know calorie counting and preportioning works for some people. But for most Americans, our lives are way too chaotic to accommodate that . . . So for normal people, the solution is not mindful eating. It’s to set up our environment, whether at our home or work, so that we mindlessly eat less.”

I’ll grant him that not everyone has the luxury to spend an hour eating each meal. But just being aware of when you are eating mindlessly is a start! If you can’t recall the sensory input you experienced at each of your last three meals, you’re probably eating mindlessly. Go ahead: try to remember the taste, smell, appearance, textures, and sounds. If you can’t remember any of them in exquisite detail, you are definitely eating mindlessly.

Wansink’s research is focused on how to eat less. That’s not the point of this
book. I’m focused on helping you get more satisfaction out of the food you’re eating, assuming that it’s the right quantity. But since many people are trying to lose weight, I think it’s important to understand how the senses affect how much we eat.

Wansink’s research has proved that container size matters. We eat more popcorn from larger buckets, we eat more food from larger plates, we snack more from larger bowls, and we eat more soup from an endless bowl that never empties. The bottom line: If you want to eat less, use smaller containers.

Finding the same sort of chameleon effect at work that I experienced watching my colleague Candice eat a silkworm pupa, he has proved that people eat faster when they eat with other fast eaters, and more slowly when they eat among slow eaters. We mimic the eating behavior of those around us. To eat less, play slow music so that everyone you’re eating with will slow his or her pace of eating. Put your fork down between bites. Break your food into courses that you eat one at a time.

Wansink recommends leaving used plates on the table so that you can see what you’ve eaten (such as baby back rib or chicken wing bones), and portioning food out onto plates rather than serving it family style. He advocates breaking large bags of food up into smaller portions to eliminate overeating and making healthful food like fruit more easily accessible. The unhealthful stuff he recommends putting in the back of the cabinet, having proved that the little bit of extra effort required to get the candy will persuade some people to forgo it entirely. You cannot underestimate the laziness of the average eater.

I want to make a distinction between the Slow Food Movement—which I endorse—and eating more slowly, for which I am evangelizing in this book. Slow Food “was founded in 1989 to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions, and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”

I don’t believe that people have a dwindling interest in food. Just the opposite. And I don’t think fast food should be demonized. But I do believe in the slow eating of everything you deem worthy (and delicious) enough to eat. To get a taste for slow, complete the Raisin d’Être exercise at the end of this chapter, in which you will stretch out eating a raisin over the course of five minutes.

I did the raisin experiment a few years ago for the first time during a “mindfulness-based stress-reduction class.” Before I took this class, my method for reducing stress had been a cold, crisp bottle of pinot blanc. I decided to try a different approach, which some, including myself, might call “woo woo.” When I showed up the first day of class, I recognized the look on my classmates’ faces. They were just like me—overworked, underslept, unfulfilled—and yet they found themselves, like me, still driving themselves harder. The long and short of this class is that I learned how to meditate to manage stress, which I did, successfully, for about three and a half weeks following the end of the class. But the one thing that stood out for me throughout the interminable meditations and yoga sessions was the first day of class, when our instructor talked us through eating a raisin over the course of five minutes. First we looked at the raisin. Then we felt it. We smelled it. And we ate it so slowly that every chew counted. Not one physical movement was wasted. I remember vividly seeing that raisin’s soul. I had never experienced a simple food so completely. This planted in me a desire to approach my food differently, not just the way I managed stress.

About a year later Roger and I were invited to stay at Miraval Resort in Arizona. One of Roger’s friends was running the place, and though I’m no fan of the desert, I’ve never met a luxury hotel that I didn’t love. Especially one that promised “life in balance.” I had heard about this type of new-agey resort but didn’t really know what to expect. Miraval turned out to be sleepover camp for adults. We signed up for activities on a big bulletin board. No kidding: no technology. Roger and I learned how to tame horses with our psyche and attended a couples communication group. The best thing we did all week, though, was attend the “mindful breakfast.” We arrived at the Cactus Flower Restaurant along with eight other campers and took our seats. After a trip to the buffet—laden with organic fruits, whole-grain baked goods, and egg white omelets—we all sat down with our plates in front of us. We were then instructed to eat, slowly, being mindful of everything on our plate. Our leader said
Bon appétit
and we got busy being mindful.

Once again, I was a little taken aback. When I gave the food my full, undivided attention, the experience of eating changed from a task to an event. Instead of talking about the day ahead of us, or the activities we were going to do, we paid attention to the food. To this day I remember the feel of the strawberry seeds against my teeth, something I hadn’t noticed in years. Both of these mindfulness experiences were instrumental in my ever-evolving relationship with food.

At Mattson we provide breakfast, lunch, and snacks for our owner-employees. Every day there’s something different for our “family meal,” whether it’s Rich’s Waffle Wednesday; chilaquiles made by one of our dishwashers, Joaquin; take-out from an Afghani restaurant; Marianne’s tomato bread soup; or leftover lamb chops from a project. Regardless, there’s always a fresh salad bar, fresh fruit, and a rush to get back to work.

I decided to do an experiment with one of the most mundane of our lunches. On a day when we had the ever-present salad bar and takeout burritos—in other words, nothing out of the ordinary—I invited people to join me for a full thirty-minute mindful lunch. I told them that we’d be eating slowly and deliberately to see what kinds of truths we unearthed.

People took their plates, made their salads, and chose their burrito. Ten of us sat at the big round table in our largest meeting room. I set a timer and we sat in silence for thirty minutes as we stretched our casual lunch out to its breaking point. I never knew thirty minutes could last so long. I had instructed the diners to eat slowly and mindfully, putting their forks (and burritos) down between bites. When we finished, most people still had food left on their plates. If mindful eating did anything, it made us eat less.

When the timer went off, I asked for comments. Julie had experienced a fragrant flashback to her college days when she used to eat burritos frequently. Janine smelled a cucumber and was transported to a luxury spa where she first experienced cucumber water. I noticed that my salad, which I had dressed with raspberry balsamic dressing, looked like a murder scene when I was done, and I was the perpetrator. But mostly I think we were all thankful the experiment was over. We scattered back to our work.

This put me in an awkward position. I wanted to summarize this book with the earth-shattering revelations we had during our tantric meal together. I wanted to write that we all walked away from the table with a newfound lease on life, clearer heads, and satisfied bellies. But this didn’t exactly happen. Where was the raisin epiphany I’d had at the stress reduction class years ago? Where were the strawberry seeds between my teeth from Miraval’s mindful breakfast? Why were things so different?

I awoke one day the next week with a start. Of course there weren’t revelations! We were in an office building with fluorescent lights. We were in a workaday mind-set. The meal was completely unnatural and forced. I found it
difficult to sit in silence with these people whom I love. I found it hard to make a burrito last thirty minutes. I found myself uncomfortably trying not to look my friends in the eye lest we laugh and throw everyone off task. Frankly, the whole experience sucked.