Eating your dinner in front of the TV is a common practice.
It can be way more entertaining and joyful, truth be told.
Especially when you are eating a whole food plant-based diet.
That big bowl of oatmeal, it takes a lot of time to chew…
Is is truly so, though?
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Ruining an experience
Us, humans, we really like our food.
When we are together, we always seem to gather around the table, in good and bad times alike.
Food, it seems to play a central role in our social and personal lives.
We talk about it a lot, we take special effort to prepare it well or we pay somebody else to do so for us.
We want our food tasty, good looking and fresh.
Why then, if we seem to enjoy and praise food so much, we watch TV while we are mindlessly shuffling in our dinner without tasting it properly?
Can we really appreciate the taste of food while watching a movie? Can we truly appreciate the movie while we are preparing and tasting our next bite?
If you try to do both, you will see it truly ruins the experience.
Disturbing digestion
So, your mind is somewhere else, following the movie or the news. In that distant land you are not eating but fighting the bad guys or arguing with that politician.
You are not engaged with the eating. Your consciousness is not preparing you for the next bite.
Are you salivating the way you would be if eating was the only thing to do?
Saliva, it turns out, maybe as important for digestion as stomach acid is.
Are you chewing consciously every bite or are you swallowing piece of food whole because you are somewhere else?
Those pieces will, at best, go through you and into the toilet bowl whole. Some good food wasted.
Were you really hungry in the first place?
When you are truly hungry, would you want some distraction while you are eating?
Wouldn’t the experience of savoring and enjoying the food be enough?
Probably.
In many cases, we are not hungry when we eat in front of the TV.
And, well, we shouldn’t eat when not hungry.
Give it a try
Try eating your main dishes without a TV, computer or a phone to distract you.
Do it for a while and then put on a movie while eating.
You will find it hard and an unpleasant experience, we guarantee it.
