When Did Eating Become Something We Fit In?

Setting a beautiful atmosphere can be rewarding and beneficial

What Happened Before You Finally Ate?

When we talk about nutrition, we almost always begin with the food. What did you eat? Was there enough protein? Were there vegetables on the plate? How much sugar did you have? Were the carbohydrates good ones? All of those questions can be useful, but after everything we have been talking about in this Wellness Letter, I think there may be another question we need to ask first: what happened during the hours before you finally sat down to eat?

Think about an ordinary busy day. You get up with things already on your mind, have something small for breakfast or decide you aren't hungry yet, get caught up in work and realize lunch is later than you intended, then eat something while answering an email or standing at the kitchen counter because there isn't really time to stop. Somewhere in the afternoon, you start looking for something, but you have another hour or two to get through, so you have a coffee, grab something small, or keep going. Then supper arrives, and for the first time all day you actually sit down in front of a substantial plate of food.

And you're starving.

We tend to judge what happens next as though supper exists all by itself. Why did I eat so much? Why did I go back for seconds? Why am I still looking for something later? Why don't I have more willpower at night? But maybe we are starting the investigation several hours too late. If the body has been inadequately fed, the mind has been occupied, hunger signals have repeatedly been pushed asid,e and supper is the first substantial opportunity to eat, it makes sense to look at the entire day rather than blaming the person sitting at the supper table.

There is another part of this that researchers are beginning to understand more clearly, and I find it fascinating because it changes the way we think about eating while doing something else. Eating is not only a matter of food entering the stomach. Our attention to a meal and even our memory of having eaten it appear to play a part in what happens later. Studies of distracted eating have found that when our attention is somewhere else during a meal, we may eat more at a later eating occasion. That doesn't mean watching television with supper automatically makes us overeat, but it does suggest that actually experiencing the meal may be part of what makes a meal feel complete.

Think about the difference. You can eat a sandwich while working at your computer and suddenly look down to discover that it is gone, or you can sit somewhere, see the sandwich, smell it, taste it, and notice that you have eaten it. Nutritionally, it could be exactly the same sandwich. The protein, carbohydrate, fat, and calories haven't changed. But your experience of eating it has.

And that may be something we've underestimated because modern nutrition has become so focused on the composition of food that we rarely talk about the experience surrounding it.

There is even a physiological response to food that begins before we have properly started eating it. The sight, smell, taste, and anticipation of food can trigger what researchers call cephalic phase responses—anticipatory changes that help prepare the body for digestion, absorption, and metabolism. In other words, the body isn't completely indifferent to the experience leading up to a meal. Seeing something delicious, smelling supper cooking, and anticipating that you're about to eat are part of a much larger process than food simply landing in the stomach.

For generations, cooking created anticipation almost accidentally. You smelled supper before you ate it. You saw food being prepared. Someone put it on plates. You came to the table. There was a beginning to the meal, then the eating, and eventually an end.

Now, food can be something we barely interrupt our day to receive.

We can unwrap it while driving, eat it from a container while looking at a computer, or carry it into the living room without really noticing what is on the plate because we're already paying attention to something else. Again, none of those things are terrible, and sometimes life genuinely requires us to eat wherever and whenever we can. The concern isn't one rushed lunch. It is what happens when rushing and being distracted become our normal way of eating.

Maybe this is why we need to broaden the way we think about nutrition.

Of course, what we eat matters enormously. We still need protein, vegetables, fruits, fiber, healthy fats, minerals, vitamins, and enough food to meet the needs of the body. But those nutrients don't arrive in isolation. They arrive inside a meal, and that meal arrives inside a day.

So before we immediately ask what needs to be removed from the plate, added to the plate, or counted on the plate, maybe we should occasionally look a little farther back and ask:

Did I actually give myself an opportunity to eat today — or did I spend the day fitting food around everything else?

Because sometimes what looks like a problem at supper may have started long before supper was ever put on the table.

When Did We Take the Pleasure Out of Nutrition?

Somewhere along the way, we became very good at talking about food without talking very much about the pleasure of eating it. In fact, much of the shaming that happened to people for gaining weight was focused on them loving food too much. No wonder we try not to notice it anymore. We talk about grams of protein, carbohydrates, calories, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and whether something is good for us or bad for us, and all of that information certainly has its place, but food was never meant to exist only as a collection of nutrients. We see it, smell it, anticipate it, taste it, and experience its temperature and texture, and all of those things contribute to the experience we call a meal.

This isn't only romantic thinking about food. The body actually begins responding before the first bite reaches the stomach. Researchers call this the cephalic phase of digestion, and it includes anticipatory responses triggered by thinking about food and by seeing, smelling, and tasting it. Salivation is the obvious one that most of us recognize, but digestive and metabolic responses are beginning as well. In human research, even the sight, smell, and thought of appetizing food have been shown to stimulate gastric secretions. In other words, when something cooking in the kitchen smells wonderful, and you suddenly realize how hungry you are, your body isn't waiting patiently for the first forkful before becoming involved.

That could make you think differently about the way we prepare a plate. We sometimes treat presentation as something restaurants do because they want the food to photograph well, but there is a reason a colourful, fresh-looking meal makes us want to eat it. Research into food presentation has found that the way food is arranged can influence how much people like it and even the positive emotions they experience around it. That doesn't mean we need tweezers to arrange the parsley or that Tuesday's supper needs to look as though it came from a five-star restaurant. It means our eyes are part of eating too.

So if we are trying to eat well, why wouldn't we make good food something we genuinely look forward to?

Put some thought into the plate. If supper is chicken and vegetables, it doesn't have to look like a punishment for trying to be healthy. Roast the vegetables until they smell wonderful, use different natural colours, add herbs or seasoning you love, put the food onto a plate you enjoy using, and take a second to actually look at what you've made before you begin eating it. Last time we talked about eating different natural plant colours because those colours represent different plant compounds and nutrients. This time I want us to look at colour for another reason altogether: a beautiful plate can make us want to sit down and eat the food that is good for us.

And then there is the room around the plate.

I think we have underestimated how valuable it can be to create somewhere in the house that actually welcomes us to eat. It doesn't have to be a formal dining room, and it certainly doesn't need to be expensive. Put down the placemat you like. Use the plate you always save for company. Pour your water into the glass that feels good in your hand. Put the salt and pepper on the table rather than getting up halfway through the meal, and if there are flowers or herbs outside, bring a little bit of them in. Maybe there is music you enjoy in the background, or maybe after a day full of sound you would rather have none at all. The point isn't to create the perfect table. The point is to create a place you actually want to arrive at.

There is something interesting about that word, arrive, because so much of what we've been exploring in this Wellness Letter is about never really arriving anywhere before we're already moving on to the next thing. We work while we eat, scroll while we wait, listen while we walk, and think about tomorrow while we're finishing today. A meal gives us one of the few opportunities that already exist in the day to say, for the next little while, this is what I'm doing. I'm eating.

And pleasure matters here. I don't mean pleasure as permission to eat anything we want in unlimited amounts because “food should be enjoyable.” I mean remembering that nutritious food can and should give us pleasure too. The smell of garlic or herbs cooking, the sweetness of a tomato in August, the crunch of something fresh, the warmth of soup, the colour of roasted vegetables, and the satisfaction of sitting down hungry to something you genuinely wanted to eat are not unnecessary extras we need to remove in order to become healthier. They are part of why human beings have gathered around food for thousands of years.

Maybe this is also why some “healthy eating” plans become so difficult to sustain. If every meal is chosen only according to what we believe we're supposed to eat, with very little consideration for whether we actually enjoy it, we have turned nourishment into another obligation. We may be able to follow that for a while, just as we can follow many strict routines for a while, but there is a big difference between eating something because it appears on the approved list and building a way of eating in which the foods that support us are also foods we genuinely want.

And this brings us right back to the larger conversation we've been having about stopping. Creating an inviting place to eat isn't another task we need to add to an already busy life. In fact, it can do the opposite. The table can become one of the places where we deliberately stop trying to fit two or three things into the same ten minutes.

Maybe one of the healthiest things we can put around our food isn't another ingredient at all.

Maybe it's enough time, attention, and pleasure to actually experience the meal we have already made.

What Are We Bringing to the Table Besides the Food?

Once we start thinking about the experience of eating rather than only the nutrients on the plate, we also have to think about what else comes to the table with us. Sometimes it is the television, sometimes the phone, sometimes the conversation we've been having in our head since three o'clock, and sometimes it is another person who has had an equally long day and arrives at supper carrying their own worries, frustrations, and exhaustion. We can put a beautiful meal onto a beautiful plate and still bring the entire day to the table with us.

This is where I think atmosphere means much more than a nice placemat and a pretty glass. The atmosphere of a meal is also the noise in the room, the pace at which we eat, whether we feel rushed, whether we're paying attention to the food, and whether the people sitting together actually enjoy being there. A television can make eating very easy because it asks almost nothing of us socially. We can sit beside someone we love, eat an entire meal, and never have to think of anything to say. After a demanding day, there are times when that may feel like exactly what we want.

But when that becomes the way we eat most of the time, something interesting can happen. Turn the television off, move the meal to the table, and suddenly two people who have lived together for twenty years can look at one another and think, Now what do we talk about?

I don't think we should automatically interpret that awkwardness as evidence that a relationship has lost its connection or that a family no longer has anything to say to one another. Sometimes we are simply out of practice. If the habit has been plate, sofa, television for years, conversation hasn't been required during that part of the day, and when we remove the thing that has been filling the space for us, the empty space can feel uncomfortable at first.

We may have to learn how to talk over supper again.

That matters for couples, but I think it matters enormously for families with children as well. Conversation is a skill, and like most skills, it develops through use. A child who sits at a table doesn't need to be interrogated about school or expected to participate in a meaningful family discussion every evening. Sometimes conversation begins with something completely ordinary — something funny that happened, what everyone thought of the meal, something the dog did, or where somebody would go if they could travel anywhere tomorrow. The subject isn't necessarily the important part. The important part is that we begin creating a space where people have an opportunity to speak, and somebody else has an opportunity to listen.

We also need to be realistic enough to acknowledge that conversation isn't automatically relaxing. Sometimes talking is exactly what someone needs after being alone all day, and sometimes it is the last thing they need after spending eight hours dealing with people. One person may arrive at supper wanting connection while the other desperately wants ten minutes without another question. Neither person is necessarily wrong. This brings us straight back to the question we've been asking throughout this Wellness Letter: What have I had too much of today, and what haven't I had enough of? Maybe tonight the meal needs laughter and conversation. Maybe tonight everyone needs to eat for five minutes before anybody expects very much from anybody else.

And there is another side of atmosphere that we don't talk about enough: what we choose to talk about while we're eating. The supper table doesn't have to become the place where every family problem is solved, where the bills are discussed, where someone is corrected for something they did that morning, or where tomorrow's impossible schedule gets organized. Those conversations may need to happen, but they don't necessarily need to happen while everyone is eating. If the purpose of the meal is partly to give us a stopping point in the day, we don't have to use that stopping point to introduce another source of tension.

This doesn't mean every supper has to be peaceful, beautiful, and filled with wonderful conversation. Real families have disagreements. Children complain. Couples get irritated with one another. Somebody doesn't like what was cooked, somebody's phone rings, and somebody needs to leave in twenty minutes. The goal isn't to create a picture-perfect dinner table.

The goal is to notice what kind of eating environment we have created most of the time and decide whether it is giving us what we want from it.

Maybe that means eating at the table together twice a week instead of promising ourselves we'll suddenly do it every night. Maybe it means leaving the television off for the first ten minutes. Maybe it means putting the phones somewhere else and discovering that the first few meals feel awkward. If they do, let them be awkward. We have become accustomed to having something else fill almost every silence in our lives, so it makes sense that silence can feel strange when we first give it back.

And then, when the meal is finished, there is one more opportunity that I don't want us to overlook.

We don't necessarily need to move directly from the table back into sitting. 

There are dishes to clear, food to put away, counters to wipe, and on a nice evening, maybe a few minutes to walk outside afterwards. That ordinary movement after eating has value of its own, and we'll come back to why in Movement Matters, because there is some fascinating physiology behind what happens when our muscles start working after a meal.

For now, I think the larger point is enough. A meal can be more than the delivery system for nutrients. It can create a beginning and an end, a place to arrive, an opportunity for pleasure, sometimes a place for connection and, when we're finished, a natural transition back into movement.

Maybe we don't need to make eating more complicated.

Maybe we need to give eating enough space to become a meal again.

 

Bringing the Meal Back

After looking at all of this, eating well begins to feel like something much bigger than choosing the right foods. What is on our plate still matters, of course, but so does how we arrive at that plate, whether we have eaten enough throughout the day, whether we actually notice and enjoy our food, and what kind of space we create around eating it. None of this needs to become another set of rules. Instead, maybe this week we experiment with making one or two meals feel a little more like meals again.

· Look at the day before judging supper. If you arrive at dinner ravenous or find yourself eating more than you intended, ask what and how much you ate earlier in the day before deciding that supper is the problem.

· Let yourself experience the food. Notice the smell while it is cooking, make the plate look inviting, use colours and textures you enjoy, and choose foods that you genuinely look forward to eating rather than treating nutrition as something you have to endure to be healthy.

· Create somewhere you want to eat. A favourite plate, a placemat, a glass you love, flowers from outside, or simply clearing the clutter from one end of the table can change the feeling from getting something to eat to sitting down for a meal.

· Try eating without another activity sometimes. You don't have to ban television or phones from your life. Just notice how different the meal feels when eating is the main thing you're doing rather than the thing you're doing while something else has your attention.

· Let conversation develop rather than forcing it. If eating without the television feels awkward at first, don't assume you have nothing to say to one another. You may be out of practice. Start with ordinary conversation and allow silence, too.

· Think about what you bring to the table emotionally. Not every problem needs to be solved over supper. Sometimes the bills, tomorrow's schedule, and the difficult conversation can wait until after everyone has eaten.

· Let the end of the meal lead naturally into a little movement. Clear the dishes, put the food away, tidy the kitchen, or take a short walk outside rather than automatically moving from one chair to another. We'll explore why that matters in Movement Matters.

And maybe the simplest question to carry with you is this:

Am I giving myself time to actually eat — or am I still fitting food around everything else?

Because good nutrition isn't only about putting better food on the plate.

It is also about creating enough space in our lives to receive, enjoy, and be nourished by it.

This Week's Nutrition Challenge: Make One Meal a Meal

Choose one meal each day this week and give it your full attention.

It doesn't need to be fancy, and it doesn't need to take an hour. For that one meal:

· Put your food on a plate and make it look appealing.

· Sit somewhere you actually want to eat.

· No phone, computer, or television while you're eating.

· Notice the food — the smell, taste, texture, and whether you're actually enjoying it.

· If you're eating with someone, let conversation happen without feeling that every silence needs filling.

· When you're finished, get up and do a little light movement rather than immediately moving to another chair.

Did changing how you ate change anything about how you experienced the meal — your enjoyment, how quickly you ate, how satisfied you felt, or how you felt afterwards?

Let us know at info@casaromawellness.com, we really are interested to hear.