We invest so much into food, our time, money even our thoughts: it changes our mood, it strengthens our relationships when we eat together and food choices express who we are.
But food has a dark side, so many! We worry about eating unhealthy, about weight gain and how we can control our intake. Eating is not just pleasure; it is also about the struggle with ourselves truthfully. We eat to gain weight, we eat to lose weight, we eat when we are sad, we eat when we are bored, we eat when we are happy but forget the main purpose of food.
In the last few decades we have learnt an enormous amount about the psychology of food.
People love to eat ideas
Wow! I love that concept, i have never had it…may i? Most people are adventurous with food and do not care if it is good for them or not. They just want to try what they hear and occasionally see.
Perhaps you have been caught up in one of those awkward conversations that involves bragging about what you have eaten or tasted or smelt. People start listing all sorts of exotic foods they once tasted—each trying to outdo the last. What’s that about? It is all our mind playing tricks with us, giving us the notion that bragging about food makes us look better. For example, people know that egusi with rat sauce topping might taste weird but they will not find the idea ridiculous if an expensive chef sells the idea, just to say they have had it.
Bad mood makes you eat bad
This brings us to emotional eating, this is mainly caused by depression not hunger. According to research, generally when people are put in a bad mood, they are more likely to reach for sugary and high-fat snacks. Negative emotions also make people prefer a snack rather than a proper meal or vegetables.
But hold on, good moods don’t necessarily make you eat good stuff either. People even eat more when they are in a good mood, but the only difference is they have more of everything and might make healthier choices.
If it is healthy, eat a lot of it
People have this notion that because a certain food has been branded super healthy they can stuff themselves with it- this should not be so. For example, wheat is a very healthy wholesome food but guess what it is just as dangerous. Wheat is loaded with gluten and even spikes blood sugar amongst other things. So again, that thinking is wrong, as they say- too much of anything and everything is bad.
Toast bread tastes weird in the afternoon
People have a belief about food that are suppose to be eaten at a particular time and it doesn’t look right if done otherwise.
The truth is the context in which food is eaten affects us much more than we might imagine. This includes the time of the day, who is around us, where we are and so on. Dont deprive yourself of anything you want that is healthy of course simply because the time have passed to have it or the person by you might find it unusual.
Our tastes bud changes with age
Believe it or not as we age, our sense of taste gets weaker. One study found that the ability to detect salt was most affected, as was the ability to detect ‘umami’, now considered one of the basic tastes, along with sweet, sour, salty and bitter.
Depending on the exact taste, older people may need between 2 and 9 times as much of a condiment like salt to experience the same taste. Men seem to be particularly affected by this loss in the ability to taste.
The reason is partly that older people have fewer taste buds but mainly that the sense of smell weakens with age. We actually taste much of our food with our noses, so when the nose doesn’t work so well, taste sensation is lost as well. So dont blame your mother for dumping more salt in her food, it comes with the age.
You cannot really tell when you are full
We tend to think that the amount of food we eat is a result of how hungry we are. It’s a factor, but not the only one. We are also affected by the size of the plates, serving spoons, packets and so on.
This has been most memorably demonstrated in a study where participants ate out of a soup bowl that was filled up secretly from under the table. Others were served more soup in the usual way. Those eating out of the magically refilling bowl had almost twice as much soup but felt no less hungry and no more full.
The moral of this strange study is that our stomachs provide only crude messages about how much we’ve eaten. Instead we rely on our vision and the eye is easily fooled.
Remember we were told that the stomach tells the brain that is full 20 minutes after it is actually full. So here is my tip, buy food is smaller packs and eat in smaller bowls.