Cure Your Cravings

“People who love to eat are always the best people.” Julia Child

For many people, food is a significant source of stress. In this country, even those who do not face food scarcity struggle with their diets, as the availability of so much food mixed with conflicting advice about what we should eat can be frustrating and confusing. Whereas animals in the wild feed on what’s available—even our domesticated dogs and cats will happily eat whatever we share with them—it is different for humans living with access to a wide range of foods. With so many choices, we do not just feed, but engage in an elaborate process of eating that comes with numerous decisions--calories, vitamins, sugar content, fiber, salt, to name a few. And food choices frequently get mixed up with deep seated emotions, culture, education, socioeconomic status—they can even reflect our political preferences. Unlike our dog who stayed underfoot in the kitchen, patiently waiting to eat whatever dropped on the floor, we infuse food with a host of properties. Treated as either elixir or toxin, food is more to us than just available energy; it holds the promise of controlling the inherent unpredictability that comes with living life in a physical body—disease, disability, pain, cravings, weight gain, binges, and desires.

From a biological perspective, food is any substance which contains either protein, carbohydrate, or fat, along with other nutrients that can be used to give us energy and sustain our vital physiological processes. Eating is also a biological process that involves nutrient intake, digestion, and cellular assimilation. But, as the growing billion-dollar wellness industry suggests, food and eating mean much more to us than sustenance and play a greater role in our lives than simply providing energy. Even if you do not find eating problematic, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the books, podcasts, programs, and specialists who are eager to tell you how and what to eat to achieve weight loss or ward off disease.

Eating is our most elemental interaction with the environment. Along with safety, it is a primary need, one that intimately connects us with the natural world and the physical borders of living in a body. It can be broken down into the physiological processes of taste, chewing, and digestion, but it is experienced as more than a purely physiological process. Eating is an intensely subjective experience full of sensations and emotions that are elicited way before any morsel of food touches the tongue. And we all know that it is not always driven by physical hunger. What we eat, when we eat, and how we eat is a visceral experience that reflects our relationship to our bodies and how we meet its most basic physical needs.

Many of us approach our food choices and eating behaviors cognitively. We are drawn to the logical guidelines of “eat this, not that”, which make recommendations based on evidence related to a diet’s long term health benefits. But logical thinking anticipates guaranteed results; how and what we eat rarely provides the rationally calculated outcomes we expect. We can carefully follow a prescribed diet but still struggle to feel satisfied or even reap its promised health benefits. We all encounter people who eat healthy foods yet still get autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, and cancer. Basing our choices on objective measures such as calories and nutrient values fails to recognize the powerful subjective directive of the body. We like to think we are in control, but when it comes to nourishment, it is the body that rules the roost.

All foods have nutrients, but not all foods are nourishing. In our culture we tend to focus heavily on a food’s calorie and nutrient content while ignoring the important role food and eating play in our ability to nourish ourselves. Nourishment goes beyond the food we consume to include all the aspects of the eating experience that help to create a sense of contentment and deep satisfaction. Eating is a visceral experience, so we can’t rely on the mind to guide us toward nourishment. We must focus entirely on the body, which is quite good at telling us what it needs. Our understanding of what is nourishing unfolds as we tune into the sensations of the body, not listening for words, but tapping into the body’s subtle vibrations—the twitches, twinges, feelings of hot and cold, sensations of tension and expansion—and the emotions they elicit. We have at our disposal all the information we need to make nourishing food choices; we just need to get out of our head and allow the body to guide us.

The first step in eating involves the arousal of sensations in anticipation of the food we are about to eat. We might respond to the actual presence of the food or to mental images, taking in an array of real or imagined qualities such as a food’s colors, texture, and aroma, which we then mix with past experiences, values, and beliefs about that food or one like it. Even before food reaches our mouth we start to notice subtle changes in our body—we start to salivate, emotions arise, even our breathing rate changes in anticipation of what we are about to eat.

As the food enters the mouth it encounters the tongue, which is an important, but frequently underrated, muscle related to nourishment. The tongue’s surface is covered in nerves that detect and transmit taste sensations to the brain. These receptors identify what are considered the four common tastes of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. The receptors for sweet and salty are most prominent. There is a fifth taste, known as umami, which is thought to be related to the subtle taste we might describe as savory.

As a muscle, the tongue moves the food around in the mouth, which enables it to be exposed to a greater number of taste receptors. The more time the tongue takes to move food around, the more taste information is sent to the brain, which increases our sense of satisfaction and satiety. The work of the tongue also enhances sensations of mouth feel, sending a confluence of tastes and textures that influence the digestive process and enhance our eating experience.

Chewing works in tandem with the tongue to mash up the food so it is small enough to swallow. By making food smaller, chewing helps to spread more of the particles around on the tongue’s surface, enhancing its taste. The flavors of some foods change as they are chewed into smaller pieces, which increases our sense of satisfaction even further. Additionally, research has shown that chewing is effective at relieving stress, which is one reason we may crave crunchy food when we are irritable, bored, or angry.

An often-overlooked component of eating is the role posture and breathing plays in the enjoyment of food. Slouching while eating, which is a common occurrence as we eat in our cars or at our desks, decreases the satisfaction of eating. Poor posture impedes our ability to draw air into the lower lobes of the lungs where the oxygen exchange rate is at its highest. As less oxygen is extracted from each breath, our respiratory rate increases, and the body senses it is under stress. Research has found that stress mutes the sensitivity of the taste buds, which makes food not taste as good. Standing while eating also seems to reduce our enjoyment; the physical stress of being upright has been shown to decrease the sensitivity of our taste buds. Anyone who has suffered through a contentious family dinner will find it no surprise that our state of mind changes how food tastes. To truly enjoy food, it is best to be relaxed, breathing easily, and in a calm state of mind.

What can the tongue, chewing, and posture teach us about nourishment? We can eat the healthiest food available and follow strict dietary rules, but eating too fast, not chewing properly, and regularly engaging in meals on the run will diminish our sense of enjoyment of the eating process. Research may argue that subjective nourishment is an extraneous, unnecessary component of healthy eating—calories, fiber, and less processing are more important to our overall health. Certainly, what we eat is an important part of good nutrition, but how we eat and what we experience while eating goes a long way in sustaining good eating habits.

Many of us are afraid to let go of our narrow food rules. The very idea of tuning into the body to let sensations guide us seems like a sure path to the chips and chocolate. But cravings for unhealthy food come from the mind; they are misinterpretations of our body’s signals. Our gut knows what nutrients we need and will send this information to the brain. We’ve just spent a lifetime failing to hear its wisdom. Maybe it is time to tune in and relearn.

Can you trust the wisdom of your body? Perhaps you’d like to try an experiment. Take a regular sized portion of your favorite “forbidden” food. Place it on your tongue and chew it for one to two minutes. Let it linger on your tongue. Notice your breathing as you put it in your mouth and as you move it around while chewing. Does the taste change? What about the food’s control over your attention? Do you feel satisfied after it spends so much time in contact with your taste buds? Shift your attention away from the “should’s” of eating to hear the language of your body. You may be surprised by what you hear.