Food and Mood

We need caffeine to wake us up and chocolate to make waking up worthwhile!
The story of Kaldi, the 9th-century Ethiopian goatherd who discovered coffee, did not appear in writing until 1671. (It is quite likely that parts of the coffee plant were being eaten by humans much before this). Legend has it that he noticed his goats excitedly prancing around happily after eating the beans from the coffee plant. The rest of the story all the way to Starbucks is history!

There is a tremendous sensory aspect to eating.

This is especially clear with chocolate. Chocolate comprises a number of raw and processed foods produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. The rich dark color works on the sense of sight. Its smooth texture stimulates the sense of touch. Once it melts in the mouth, its rich aroma fills up the olfactory sense of smell. Then it starts to work on the taste buds.
Chocolate has 3 most important chemical components: Phenylethylamine, Anandamide and Methylxanthine. Our body produces Phenylethylamine when we feel romantic love. This "love chemical" works on the brain to produce similar pleasurable sensations. Theobromine, the primary alkaloid in cocoa solids and chocolate is partly responsible for chocolate's mood-elevating effect.

What if we could eat all our food mindfully while indulging all the senses. Would it make the sacred act of nourishing the body more satisfying and sensual if we took in our food with our whole being tuning into every sensation from it? Next time you sit down to eat, see if you can shut off all the other inputs and just imbibe nourishment while being fully in the present. This means no TV, no email, no reading, and ideally, eating in silence.

The results are surprising. The same food becomes more enjoyable and satisfying. A smaller quantity of food can be more satisfying when eaten mindfully!

Do you feed your dog Diesel fuel?

High fructose Corn syrup( Hfcs) has revolutionised with food processing industry by providing an unlimited supply of cheap sweetener. If you read the label, you will find Hfcs in just about every sweet food or beverage you can buy at the grocery store ( by the way, did you know you have 40,000 choices the moment you enter a medium sized supermarket?).

Here's the kicker, Hfcs bypasses ( effectively flies under the radar) of the normal satiety mechanism. In other words, your taste buds don't get saturated with 40 grams of sugars in Hfcs as they would with 40 grams of crystalline sugar. Futher, you could potentially keep eating an enormous amount of food sweetened with Hfcs without the brain's fullness sirens going off.

The reason for this is that your brain does not recognize Hfcs the way it does more conventional foods which have existed in nature for millenia.

SO, next time you get ready to put something in your mouth, think about whether or not your body would even know what to do with it ( is it something your great great grandmother would know of)? The greater the number of steps between the soil and your plate, the higher the likelihood that this food is going to wreak havoc on your insides.