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Dalton
Roberts |
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The only thing better
than tasting everything you have ever wanted is to truly taste one
thing. If you have not learned to truly taste one thing, it would be a
superficial experience to taste everything. There is a good story
in one of Thich Nhat Thanh’s books. His family was very poor but when
his mother went to the market she always brought home one of his
favorite cookies. He would sit and smell the cookie before taking that
first bite. He would wait a long time between bites. It was the only
cookie he would have for days and he wanted to totally savor it. I did not have an
all-day cookie when I was a child but I did have an all-day sucker. The
end of that thing looked like a tennis ball. To this day I can still
taste those things. We found a trick to
extend the pleasure of our bubble gum. When the flavor would wear thin
from hours of chewing, we’d roll it in sugar or sprinkle a little
cinnamon on it and go at it one more time. One day I walked in on
my father and he was eating Eagle Brand milk out of the can. I had never
seen him do it before and asked him about it. He told me he was the
oldest of eleven children in his family and had to help raise all his
brothers and sisters. His twin sisters were not strong and the doctor
told them to make their bottle formula with Eagle Brand. Dad loved the
smell of it and sneaked an occasional tiny taste but the family was too
poor for him to have all he wanted. He said, “I decided if I ever got
grown and made enough money I would eat all the Eagle Brand milk I
wanted.” Sure enough, there he was eating spoonfuls of it. How thoughtlessly we
speed through many of our meals. We get much less of the nutrition from
them than we would if we went slow and really relished every bite. Wolfing down food
forces the stomach to do what the teeth are designed to do. It must
often pass poorly chewed food on down the line and the body ends up
getting little benefit from it. Brownie was my
favorite childhood dog but he never was healthy because he would not eat
anything but wieners. No matter how big you cut the pieces, he swallowed
them whole. We tried the fanciest dog foods on him but he was strictly a
wiener dog. At the end of WWII
when one of the concentration camps was liberated by allied troops, one
of the inmates was clearly healthier than all the others. He explained
his secret. He said he chewed every bite of his food and chased it with
nothing but a tiny sip of water. The enzymes in his saliva assured
maximum nutrition from his pitiful diet. By not diluting the food in his
stomach with a lot of liquid, he got the full advantage of complete
digestion. Purely aside from the
nutritional advantages of slow chewing and minimal liquids, there are
definitely health advantages to savoring each bite. Deepak Chopra,
renowned Ayurvedic physician, says we should taste a little of
everything on the table. He says taste buds are directly connected to
different areas of the brain and food enjoyment keeps those brain areas
alive and vigorous. So we should eat slow and pleasurably for our
brain’s sake. How much difference
would it make in our happiness if we lived each day in a “cookie”
frame of mind? I have found a trick that helps me to do this. When I
find myself truly enjoying something, whether it is food or fellowship
with a friend, I simply say to my monkey mind, “Freeze!” Then I
consciously slow down and take in the experience with all my awareness. Try it. Remember you
have taste buds in your soul, too.
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