Psychological Impressions on Food

9/24/2012
Nerissa Magol
100215010

Hungry? Thinking about food?

Credit: Nerissa Magol

Out of 24hrs in a day, how many times a day do you think of food? It is a hunger/ urge about thinking what your next meal is going to be or is it a negative psychological thought that others think is an undesirable trait in you? For me, when I think about the word food, a delicious chocolate cupcake appears in front of my eyes. What about you, it could be a roast chicken with mashed potatoes and veggies, or a platter of sushi that draws an image in your mind.



Credit: Maggie 

       What does food mean to you? Isn’t food just food? Or is food a fuel for our bodies? When did food become more than just nutrition’s? Doesn't healthy eating mean eating the essential food groups in an enjoyable way to keep a normal, maintained weight? People with healthy eating habits use food for energy, and sometimes as a source of pleasure. They may be motivated by health and beauty, or their desires for weight loss or keeping it maintained, and live a life that replicates Hippocrates' advice "Let food be thy medicine, and medicine shall be thy food." Spoken By an ancient Greek physician.

 

Credit: Nerissa Magol, at Chillis Restaurant.

Psychologically healthy eating means, "eating without meaning."  It is important to remember that what we eat affects how we feel, and how we feel and think affects how and what we eat. Unfortunately in today's world, what and how we eat is influenced by various dynamics, such as the culture we are brought up in, the environment around us, social stresses in our daily lives, and family issues. This causes us to irrationally see food as a coping tool, while the truth is that using food to deal with stress, hopelessness, boredom, anger, or anxiety will only make us feel worse in our future. Many of us have forgotten the meaning of nutritional food intake. Fast food chains are competing with their psychological pricing to “up-size” their “value meals”. Common slogans such as “just $1 for any size”, are seen everywhere around us today.  It’s a way of fooling us into believing that bigger is better, and not only better, but normal since majority of the people are following this daily so why don’t you. Think you can resist the "Buy one, Get a Two Free" offer? You can't, and in fact, you'll probably buy more than you would normally buy. This is all a prank or a myth as some say towards psychologically arrangements in supermarket’s or restaurants that try to confuse our minds.

Everyone day has different views about what is good and what is not good. Chocolates are supposed to be bad; but recent studies have shown, having chocolate in moderate amounts could be beneficial. For example, dark chocolate lowers blood pressure, says Dr. Dirk Taubert, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Cologne, Germany. Having a balanced diet by including all the food groups satisfies our body needs as well as our psychological wants. I personally believe, one should eat for the taste and not just because they have to. Enjoying the first three bites of your cupcake or your roast chicken with mashed potatoes, brings the satisfaction in our minds and on our pallets; which further decides if we want to continue eating for its tastes or for the sake of finishing our food.

Want to end with a small story that I would like to share with my readers, that I heard couple of months ago regarding a seventy-five year old man, who loves having sweet dumplings daily. He eats at least one kilogram of sweet dumplings and does not gain weight. I was wondering how is it possible to not gain weight with a food that contains tons and tons of sugar and cooked in litres and litres of oil. Later, I was told to guess what could be a possible reason for this gentleman not to gain weight by eating something greasy and fattening every day. Finally the answer was revealed that he does not swallow the sweet dumplings he eats daily. He simply, chews the dumplings, enjoys the taste of the dumplings and spits out the substance of the sweet dumplings. He experimented this ideology by himself and found himself not gaining weight. He asked his doctor, and the doctor said, " You are just swallowing the juices of the sweet dumplings, not the actual mass of the product. Therefore, liquids are easy to digest, compared to the mass substances we swallow".

                             So who's up for a weight maintaining food challenge?