Practise mindful eating for lower stress, say scientists – smell, feel, and admire your food before you have it
- Are you hungry or just stressed out? Scientists in Hong Kong say taking a few minutes to really focus on food before eating it can help you tell the difference
- Practising mindful eating can help curb the food cravings that lead to unhealthy quick fixes and help you learn how to better savour the eating experience
In a bustling Starbucks in Hong Kong, Dr Dalinda Isabel Sanchez Vidaña and Douglas Affonso Formolo are sitting and staring at three raisins on a napkin.
Formolo – a PhD candidate in Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s department of rehabilitation sciences – is told to admire the dried fruit, smell it, caress it with his lips, and go through several other steps before he can actually swallow it.
He eats two of them in a span of 10 minutes.
This is a glimpse into the kind of mindful eating exercises that are done in the Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training programme hosted by Sanchez Vidaña, research assistant professor and Formolo’s colleague.
The purpose is to focus the brain’s attention entirely on the act of eating, and the resulting sensations and body signals.
Health practitioners have long preached the benefits of mindful eating: better digestion, healthier food choices, smarter decision making, reduced stress, improved satisfaction, weight management, an increased appreciation for food … the list goes on.
