On the Subject of (god help us ) Mindful Eating

May 31, 2010

I'm eager to post news of a really delightful and helpful read. It was a present actually, which is the best incentive to read anything. Sally Ling, a master chef who owns and operates Sally Ling's Gourmet Chinese Restaurant in Fort Lee, gave me Savor, Mindful Eating, Mindful Life, written by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung, who is a friend of Sally's and a lecturer on the subject of healthy eating and director of health promotion and communication at the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Nutrition.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a famous Zen Buddhist monk who has authored many books on the subject of creating peace within and in the world, and runs Plum Village in France, dedicated to mindful living.

I'm a Buddhist, and I've read most of Thich Nhat Hanh's works over the years. I once saw a video of him that ran about 20 minutes and focussed entirely on his mindful eating of an orange. The master spoke slowly, peeling the orange with grace, teaching the viewer not only how to savor and appreciate every bite, but how to be aware of how this gift from the earth that feeds us and keeps us alive relates to all other living things and processes. The video and lesson in mindfulness so impressed me that a few years later I tried his experiment with a group of middle school aged students at an afterschool center. Shocked with the way the kids would throw food at one another at snacktime and treat it essentially like garbage, I hoped to shift their attitudes about eating just a little. I had built up a strong relationship with them by then, and I'm sure that helped to create the spirit of respect and quiet in which about 20 children who had selected their own fruit out of a basket, peeled a banana or an orange, appraised and appreciated their snacks as they ate them. It was a lesson unlike any other these kids, who came from largely poor backgrounds, had experienced on the subject, and whatever success I had in teaching it I owe to Zen Master Hanh.

To a large extent, Savor, like many other good books out there on the subject of mindful eating, appeals to common sense. But it goes further. Sometimes you have to back up common sense with science. Research now shows how the body and mind are interrelated, and the book is based on the notion, now scientifically supported, that it's not only what we eat and drink but the way we eat and drink that "profoundly affects our physical and mental well-being." The authors follow a Buddhist-based approach to nutrition, suggesting essentially that individuals take time and put thought into eating, and experience the process with all their senses.

In order to look honestly at what we eat, how much and why, the authors suggest starting a food journal. It's not a bad idea. So many of us become totally unconscious around the process of eating either because we're on the run, watching TV or paying attention to everything but what we're ingesting.

Some of the common sense advice, supported by studies, Cheung and Hanh:

* Eat three to four reasonable meals a day.
* Avoid skipping breakfast.
* Go to bed at a reasonable hour and try to get a good night's rest.
* Eat healthy carbs such as fruits, legumes, vegetables and whole grains as these are full of vitamins, minerals and fiber.
* Practice mindful breathing and meditation to reduce stress in your life and supplement a healthy diet.

An Appendix is chock full of resources, and the numerous notes in back attest to the fact that this is both a richly insightful and well researched book. Timely and important, it presents a model of right thinking and right eating for our age.

Sayonara Blood Sports

Oct. 13, 2009

I'm wondering if some a mad coked up, emotionally challenged wrestler runs the Travel Network. Don't expect to find any real food shows there, or anything that remotely resembles a civilized experience in which you, civilized reader, would like to partake. What you get is Man Vs. Food, Mad Adventures, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman, and yes, No Reservations, featuring the handsome, charming, talented, ever predictable Anthony Bourdain.

I had to see these shows to believe them. Now I do. I really, really do.

In case you thought otherwise, none of the shows I just mentioned is about eating. They are all about the blood sport that used to be civilized dining. They're about grossing people out, about primitive man against the elements, about animalistic contests in the arena.

Last time I switched on 788, I happened on Mad Adventures, just as some guy was cutting off a live snake's head and pouring its blood into a glass. Then the heart was excised, left to quiver in a basin. I switched channels at that point.

I was really anticipating not just travel, but watching cooks respect something foreign, but not that foreign. But what you get on Channel 788 is a killing field, guys closing in on prey, as if the world itself and everything in it -- live, quivering and vulnerable -- is theirs for the taking.

The last Bourdain episode I saw -- and, I hope, it is the last -- was on the Philippines, and once again, its emphasis wasn't so much good or rare cuisine as it was the gross-out -- "See big, fat pig roasting on a spit." "See goat we are about to kill, whose entrails we are about to eat." "See what a big brave macho man I am going down on this."

I would love for time to roll forward about 10 years so Travel TV watchers could glimpse what becomes of the hosts of these shows -- if they are even here then. I wonder what X-rays of their stomachs and colons look like. How much money does it take to buy a blown out gut or an overextended colon? How much are these guys getting paid so they can commit suicide on air?

Maybe someone can ask Bourdain or Zimmerman or that poor oaf who's always belching and gagging over giant pizzas, omelets and unwieldy stacks of pancakes. Really, how much money does it take to not care about yourself at all and launch on the suicidal journey that hosting one of these shows is?

Someone somewhere must think that all women want to see on television is Oprah. I wonder where the really cool food shows are, where a camera slowly, thoughtfully pans a happy cook stirring something healthful and delightful, brought out of the earth with respect for what it yields -- rather than out of a poor animal's gut -- something that will be properly cooked, served, eaten and appreciated. Where is the show starring the gourmand who respects what she eats and expresses curiosity rather than bravado over the elements that constitute a good meal?

Indulge me this mental stream: Outside of thinking, that most precious activity that distinguishes us as humans, the most important things we do are breathe and eat -- in that order. Wouldn't you imagine then that we would strive to do both as well as possible in order to live as happily and as long as possible? Wouldn't you imagine then that breathing right and eating well, in the best sense of what the latter means, would matter to most people?

You would think....

I don't think most people have the slightest idea of how to eat properly anymore. Most of the time, even though I know better, I forget too -- the way we live keeps us from being our better selves. We're wound up, speed addicts and our culture demands we go on to the next thing before we even know what we're experiencing in the moment. Maybe we binge just so we can capture the moment whole. But it's really too bad, cause we'll killing ourselves that way.

Years ago, aware of my own predilection for hastiness, I took time out to study yoga at an ashram in Lenox, Mass. and took part in a workshop there that directed us to spend 40 minutes eating a bowl of rice, properly chewing and appreciating the process at hand. I can tell you I learned a few things-- mainly, how much better it feels to eat something mindfully than without having the slightest regard for what passes through my mouth.

Vietnamese monk and peacemaker Thich Nhat Hanh spent an entire 20-minutes eating an orange mindfully in a video he put out in the 90s. Some people have been enlightened on this subject for years.

In the late 90s, as an educational coordinator, I once spent an entire afternoon showing kids in an afterschool program how to eat a piece of fruit -- quietly and with respect for the thing being eaten that was providing life and nourishment. Believe it or not, the kids, middle schoolers, participated, amazed at their own powers of attention, their own ability to do this. Maybe too, they were trying to outdo one another with the new challenge of mindfulness-- but they put aside rowdiness and got into it. These kids who used to spend snack time tossing food at one another, got into it. And maybe, sometime in the future, when they get sick enough and bored enough with bad habits and the unhealthy routines propagated by the culture, mostly through TV, they'll remember eating properly and how it felt better.

So, it's time to switch off all the visual tripe of the Travel Channel. Time to put to rest the culinary adventures I took up to read -- mostly Bourdain's -- in the wake of that experiment.

Michael Ruhlman introduced me to great chefs, and got me yearning to eat at some of the finest eateries around the country; and Bill Buford's writing demonstrated how demanding the cooking passion can be. But it's time to put the big boys and their adventures to bed.

I'm going to break out a biography of Genet -- the journalist Janet Flanner-- and another of Clarice Lispector, the Brazilian writer.

No apologies. I'm going back to my roots, my way.