My Blog
Filling Food
That Dazzles The Mind
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By Adhvik K S
I believe that food is the universal language for all of us. I haven’t met a person yet who doesn’t adore food, besides the fact that it is necessary to survive. In the same way that stories create an explosion of imagination, colours, picturesque depictions, and sceneries, food, any delectable delight, creates a burst of flavours, distinctive, delightful, and delicious.
Everyone loves edibles, and immensely enjoys the feeling of hot food melting in your tongue, after a long exhausting day. My range of enjoyment, in the food sector, would range from a simple dosa with sambar, to a cheesy pizza, and what I consider to be the ultimate Pav Bhaji. My friends love good mushroom rice, and a burger topped with a delicious sesame seeded brioche bun. Even just reading these names out makes one drool and immediately want to eat them.
What we seldom wonder about is, what our mind goes through when eating anything, and what kind of effect it has on us. When we eat tasty food, dopamine is released in our brains. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, sort of a messenger between nerve cells in our brain and nervous system. Whenever dopamine is released, we feel immense pleasure and joy! Hence when we eat food we find delectable, the dopamine secreted by our brain makes us happy! Then again, too much dopamine isn’t good, as it would become an overload for our brain. If we eat food that might give us disgust, or simply dislike, then we might be having too much noradrenaline and serotonin, which is related to contempt, disgust, and sadness.
Talking psychologically, making better food choices, might allow us to control compulsive eating behaviors and weight gain. You can also experience feelings of calmness, high energy levels, or alertness from the foods you eat. There is also something about the texture. Some textures that food has are just greatly enjoyable, like a good slice of crispy sourdough, while other textures tend to come across as disgusting, like the aversion to squidgy and not enjoyably chewy mushrooms some have. One other thing is also being picky, and perhaps being a supertaster. This means the person in the talk would have an aversion to some foods and are extremely picky about what they eat. Often, kids don’t listen to their parents on what is healthy, and solely go on what their taste buds commune with them.
One more interesting aspect is that when we add a highly likable factor to a majorly disliked food, it tends to make the disliked or boring aspect of the other food more likeable. “For example, you want a kid to eat broccoli, serve it with something good on it, like sprinkle a little sugar on it, but something bad on it, add butter to it, add cheese.”, says Linda Bartoshul, PhD, an APA fellow, is the Bushnell professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Florida and director for psychophysical research at the university’s Center for Smell and Taste.
When we ponder upon such aspects in food, it tends to get very interesting. What we eat is very important, and I think it is important to know what happens when we eat certain foods, and what happens to our minds then. We need to question what we eat, why we eat them, what makes them enjoyable or not, what happens in our body when we eat them, and other sorts of questions. They might make the next time we eat something more meaningful.
Hope this blog was informative and interesting,
Adhvik K S
8 ‘A’
CMR National Public School
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