See, Taste, Smell, Feel, Sound

Originally Posted by Pam Turner on 01/09/13:
These are the senses that stimulate us to eat, especially the foods that are designed to make us eat even if we are not hungry or would be better off eating something nutritious.

See: We are very visual when it comes to what we choose to eat. It has been said that we eat with our eyes first. Food designers count on this for advertising. You are watching TV and a commercial comes on for a big greasy bacon cheeseburger. You will find your desire to jump in the car to go get one build as the visual stimulation continues. You may even start to feel your heart rate go up and your anxiety build. You have been manipulated by food artists in to having an emotional and physical reaction to a visual stimulus. A little experiment...take a big bite of something that looks delicious to you, chew it up really well, spit it out on to a plate and then look again. Do you want to eat it now? Would you pick it back up and chew some more and swallow? Probably not. More fun...take a big piece of pepperoni pizza, put it in the blender with some water and turn it on. Pour it in to a glass and take a good look at the globules. Ya wanna drink it up? Yeah, not so appetizing now, is it?

Taste: A no brainer here. Of course our appetite will be stimulated by tasting something yummy. We tend to crave or binge on certain things like sweet, fat, salt..strong flavors that pack a punch. You rarely see someone binge on fish or poached chicken or cauliflower.

Smell: Again, no surprise there. This is why food service businesses will pump their cooking odors out in to the atmosphere to lure in customers. We are lead by our noses and since taste and smell are dependent on each other we want what we smell.

Feel: This one is a little less recognized as a stimulus. Feel doesn't mean touch. It means mouth feel or texture. You may not be aware how much this governs what you crave. Crunchy, fatty, crispy, creamy, cold, hot, slimy, gritty, oily, tough....did you feel that? Texture can often times determine if a food is palatable or not. It can taste like heaven, but if the texture is wrong it will be rejected. This is why the ingredient list on packaged foods is so LOOONG. A great deal of food science is focused on feel or texture and additives and chemicals are enlisted to create that perfect crunch!

Sound: like texture, we hear what we eat. Crispy or crunchy foods can mean a bag of chips, or a stalk of celery, but add in the other senses and it will likely be the bag of chips.

So what's a dieter to do? You can't lock yourself up with a nose clip and a blindfold. We all have to be out in the world and that means being bombarded with constant food messages. There are a few tricks to spare you some of the taunting by advertisers. If watching TV and a food commercial comes on, close your eyes. It's that simple. You can hear that burger being described, but it will have no effect on you. If you are out and the smells are wafting, keep a small bottle of essential oils or a fragrance that you like and sniff away. People will wonder what you are sniffing, but let them wonder. If you find yourself craving salt or sweet or sour or some other intense flavor, sometimes there is nothing better then a pickle! You get smell, taste, crunch, and virtually no calories all in a nice little vibrant green package! Sugar free sweet gherkins are one of my favorite go to snacks. I can only eat one, but it has a lot of satisfaction.

Over your time spent on Cambridge you palette will cleanse and you will find that your desire for salt and grease etc will be gone and you will enjoy real food flavors more. The addictive qualities of manufactured Frankenfoods are there to suck you in, coming back for more and more. You can break that chain and believe it or not, there will be a day when you can look at what once had you hooked and it will have no hold on you. You will see it for what it is. I call it "Death on a plate". I even picture a skull and crossbones on top of it!