Mindful eating tip of the day… Honor Your Food
Mindful eating teacher and author Jan Chozen Bays, MD, has a wonderful exercise in her book “Mindful Eating” that I have adapted and use with clients and students called “looking deeply into your food”. Basically, it’s using mindfulness to delve beyond the surface value of everyday things, in this case food. In addition to the obvious sensual qualities, consider the potentially profound history and journey that food took in order to ultimately nourish you.
Honoring your food involves contemplating the chain of natural and human effort it took to bring it to you. Natural effort includes the ideal conditions of soil, sunshine, rain/water, and perhaps the miraculous timing of the right insect pollinating at the right time. Human effort involves the cultivation, care, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, stocking, acquiring, and preparing food before it arrives in the mouth. Considering how all of this came together can bring a richness to your meal that offers a satisfaction beyond physical or physiological appeasement.
Let’s use olives as an example. Take a moment to consider the rich history of olive cultivation throughout time. Olive tree branches were found in King Tut’s tomb! Reflect on the olive branch as symbol of glory and peace. Where did your olive come from? Maybe one of the groves found all across Greece, Italy, or Spain, where the trees may be centuries old. Or perhaps California, in a grove established in the 18th century. Picture the calcareous soil and dry landscapes that olive trees thrive in (especially near the Mediterranean), the pruning and care of the trees, that the lucky olive in front of you survived the ubiquitous olive fly pest, was harvested (by hand?) at a chosen time (earlier for green, later for black), and then cured or fermented in a process likely not much different than from ancient time. Envision the effort taken to transport the olive here (in my case Minnesota), and the workers who placed it on a well-lit shelf for you to add to your basket. In that little olive is nourishing Vitamin E, several antioxidants and phytochemicals, as well as desirable monounsaturated fat. As you pop an olive into your mouth, chew on all of that!
This may seem an extreme example, but it illustrates that no olive is “just an olive,” and the same can be said for raisins, avocados, oranges, etc. The sumptuous history and humble journey an olive took from the grove to your table merits recognition and gratitude. Looking deeper into food can make an impact on the foods that you choose. Would you rather eat something made BY a plant, or made IN a plant? (Thanks Michael Pollan!)
Honoring your food brings a richness to your meal and that quality affects the quantity you consume and ultimately your satisfaction.
Ready to improve your relationship with food?
Contact Nicole to learn more about a non-diet approach to nutrition.