Taste: Surprising Stories and Science About Why Food Tastes Good (61 page)

I compared my two previous mindfulness food experiences with the one at work. Those previous times, I had been among strangers. One had been in the context of a mindfulness class at an alternative medicine center. The other had been in Arizona at a mind-body spa. I was in the right frame of mind, not worrying about my next conference call.

As a result of this experience, I can’t recommend a choreographed mindful meal. If I were writing a book on how to lose weight I might have been okay with the outcome at Mattson. But my colleagues aren’t trying to lose weight and that’s not at all what this book is about. This book is about using all five of our senses to find the hidden joy in food and in doing so, take the full pleasure out of every bite.

To do this, you don’t have to eat in silence. You don’t have to limit yourself to “half a pea.” You don’t have to stretch out your meal. You don’t have to be at a spa or take a class. You can practice eating mindfully in the normal course of your life. There are multiple opportunities available to you every day to practice the skill of eating mindfully. The best time or place to enjoy a mindful meal is the one that’s
just about right
for you.

Surround yourself with like-minded people you love. Give your food proper respect by sitting down at a table when you eat. Have an open mind and try new foods, occasionally ordering something from a restaurant menu that you normally wouldn’t eat. Take in the visual beauty of your food before you dig in. Notice the colors and contours. Appreciate the topography. Let your nose go first. Smell your food before you put it in your mouth. Notice what it’s telling you. If it makes noise when you bite into it, consider its signature sound. After you take a bite, let it sit in your mouth a full second before you start chewing. Breathe deeply. Chew and continue to breathe, mouth-smelling the food for as long as you can, noticing the texture of it when it enters your mouth, and as you continue to chew. When you swallow, enjoy that last burst of volatiles that are forced up into your nose and reflect. Notice which of the five Basic Tastes are present. Notice the balance, or lack thereof. If it needs fixing, don’t be afraid to fix it. If it’s delicious, enjoy. And if you do this mindfully for a few meals, eventually it will become common practice and you’ll do it mindlessly. That is the goal.

We often take the food we eat for granted. Most of time we speed through meals, glossing over the details in our race to get calories into our stomach.

The first step in becoming a better taster is becoming a more observant eater. The following exercise will help you slow down, look at an old food in a new way, and think about how you can apply this to the rest of your dining opportunities.

YOU WILL NEED

A stopwatch or timer

3 raisins for each person doing the exercise

DIRECTIONS

1. Set the stopwatch for 5 minutes. Hand out 3 raisins to each taster.

2. Tell the tasters to eat their raisins in silence over the course of 5 minutes. Tell them to look at each raisin intently before putting it into their mouth. Once they do put a raisin into their mouth, they should keep it there for about 30 seconds before they start chewing. Ask them to try and make the 3 raisins last the full 5 minutes.

3. Start the stopwatch.

OBSERVE

• Discuss your experience.

• What was new to you?

• What stood out?

• If you can see something as simple as a raisin in a new way, consider how much more sensory input you could get from a complete meal if you’d slow down and similarly give food your full attention.

Consider the amount of force you exert when you flex your chewing muscles. This, in combination with how long it takes you to chew a food before swallowing, may indicate how much flavor you experience. Gentle, prolonged chewing works best. People who use less force (or were less energetic, to use the researcher’s terms) and
took longer to chew their food
before swallowing released significantly more aroma molecules from the food. Much of food flavor comes from the volatile aromas. Remember, volatiles are where the action is!

As a result, slower, less goal-oriented eaters get more flavor from the same food than someone who ambitiously attacks it, chews intently, and swallows quickly. Swallowing quickly just makes your meal end sooner.

If you want to release more volatiles, chew slowly and swallow only after you’ve fully experienced the aroma of the food from the taste on your tongue and mouth-smelling. The sensory pleasure of food is most intense when it is in your mouth. Chew carefully. Breathe. Chew more. Breathe. Then swallow when it’s time.

If you’re not eating consciously, you will not pick up on the subtle sensory input that differentiates good food from great. To suck more greatness from your food, make eating the only activity you do during mealtime. Put away the newspaper, turn off the television, and shut down the computer.

Treat eating the same way you treat another sensory activity: sex. If you want to get the most enjoyment from sex, you will pay attention to your partner and revel in the touch, tastes, smells, and sounds you’re experiencing. It’s unlikely that you’d get as much out of sex while you were watching television, reading a book, or talking on the phone during the act. Multisensory experiences deserve multisensory attention.

Of course, if you’re eating alone, you might be tempted to use media to stimulate your brain, but most of what’s on television or the Internet will clash with your multisensory meal. If the content of what you’re watching is incongruent, you will take less pleasure from the food. Watching the Food Network or
Top Chef
should be just fine, but most of the stuff that’s on television will steal your attention from food in general, if not make you lose your appetite altogether.

People eat more food when they listen to the radio during a meal. Unless you’re on a quest to gain weight, this is a fairly alarming result of preoccupying your mind while eating. When you listen to the radio or watch television when you eat, the more recently evolved, higher-functioning part of your brain focuses on the media, leaving no resources but the primitive, old part of the brain to process your eating. When you default to the reptilian part of the brain, things like restraint, satiety, and common sense fly out the window.

If you’re dining with others, enjoy yourself. But if the conversation gets heated and your heart starts to race, put your fork down. Save the next bite for a less arousing moment. When you’re deeply into something, such as the topic at hand, you’ll be less able to devote your attention to the food. And if the thing you’re deeply into is a new love interest, forget about getting full satisfaction from each bite. Don’t waste your money on expensive meals. M.F.K. Fisher wrote that there’s nothing more frustrating than cooking a meal for a couple who are newly in love. No matter how deliciously sensual the food, it will pale in comparison with the full-body passion of romantic bliss.

Sensory adaptation sets in upon the second bite of whatever you’re eating. With each additional bite of the same food, you’ll get less and less input from it. In other words, if it’s delicious, you’ll get less deliciousness with every bite. Eventually, you’ll tire of it completely, a concept called sensory-specific satiety. It’s
fairly easy to reverse the effect, though. All you have to do is take a bite of something else. That’s why cleansing your palate works. Even if you have a plate of food that’s half steak and half broccoli, sensory-specific satiety holds true. If you eat all the steak first, and then all the broccoli, you’ll get less enjoyment out of each than if you alternate back and forth: steak, broccoli, steak, broccoli. That’s because you’re effectively cleansing your palate with each food between bites.

If you’re trying to discern minuscule differences between foods or drinks—for example, during wine tasting—it’s important to cleanse with a neutral stimulus, such as water or a cracker, which allows your mouth to return to a neutral state so that you can glean the sensory differences between that 2008 Dry Creek Valley Pinot and the 2009.

The best time and place to teach children about the joy of food is mealtime. Use mealtimes to talk about what’s on the table. Teach your kids where it came from, how you cooked it, and what’s happening when they put it in their mouth. You can teach your kids the difference between taste and smell using a jelly bean, something they’ll enjoy eating as well. When they know the five Basic Tastes, they’ll be able to verbalize to you what they taste in their food, what they like, and what they don’t. You’ll quickly learn whether your children are Tolerant Tasters, Tasters, or HyperTasters. Respect the biology of their taster type, but encourage them to push their taste buds to try new things. Teach them that tasting is like sports, playing a musical instrument, or math: you have to practice to improve.

If you teach children that they should eat food only at the table, they will begin to respect the meal as an occasion. Even when they snack, make sure they sit down and pay attention to their food. Eating standing up, in the car, or while doing other things like playing computer games or watching television encourages mindless eating, which can have negative health consequences later in life.

Let your kids play with food. Put bowls of sauces, condiments, and jars of spices on the table. Let them find out how things savor. Be their guides as they explore flavor. When they’re old enough to accompany you to restaurants, take them out to eat. Encourage them to order from the adult menu, then share with them.

I have heard that some mothers stir into baby food the herbs and spices of
their own “flavor principles”—those flavors that epitomize their cuisine. You can also do this to teach them to like the flavor of healthful foods, even before they’re fully conscious of them, by stirring a little bit of bitter greens, fishy fish, or whole grains into their food.

When you eat, use both hands—not to pick up your food, but to count off the senses one by one (using the Sensory Star in your head) as you consider how each of them is being stimulated. Notice the visual appeal of what you’re eating. Make sure you take care to smell the food orthonasally before taking a bite. Notice its texture, texture contrast, and textural changes as you chew. If the food makes noise, consider its signature sound. Next, go through the Taste Star. Which Basic Tastes are present? Which ones are missing but should be present? Are any out of balance? Do you think any are enhancing the others? Could any be suppressing the others?

When you begin to smell through your mouth while chewing, see if you can detect any new and different aromas from what you experienced through nose-smelling. Now that you understand how taste, aroma, and texture work together to create flavor, you can start to get more of it from the food you’re eating. Add a little bit of salt. Does it enhance any of the other flavors? Add a bit of sugar. What comes to the forefront and what is masked or muted? Season away! And after every shake, dash, or squeeze, be sure to taste. Taste! Taste! Taste! It’s the only way to really learn how flavor interactions work.

Simply being aware of how your senses of smell and taste change as you age can help you address any dysfunction you may experience.

Loss of smell will plague most people at some age. The best way to fight it is to employ the other senses. Make sure every plate of food you eat is a rainbow of colors to activate and excite your sense of sight. Enhance your food with a squirt of citrus, which will make your mouth water more, so you’ll be able to get more tastes and aromas from the food. Add a crunchy element to your meal to engage your senses of hearing and touch: croutons in salads, cucumbers on sandwiches,
and crumbled granola or nuts over just about anything. The more you hear and crunch, the more sensory stimulation you’ll experience.