Forgive me, but it never occurred to me that playing with the 5 senses could alter how you experience food and enhance it by making each meal exciting and healthier than before until recently when I studied the science behind it.
About two weeks ago, I went on a food expedition with a friend to try this relatively new eatery called Entourage located in Y Block, DHA. Entourage is not your standard restaurant that serves a menu for the masses, in fact, they are the ether of everything-French, and offer a visually beguiling montage of French Cuisine that is complimented by an in-house French bakery and confectionery led by a French Chef, Arnaud Sylla! It is there where I stumbled across this very known, but alien concept to me, and I was intrigued.
Did yo know that our five sense work in tandem to influence our food experience, but it is your sense of sight, your eyes that have already begun to taste the food? This visit where I picked up that if you incorporate your five senses, you can find yourself in a meditative state, thus leaving you balanced, grounded and calm had to be shared with you and here’s how you can also live it.
Your 5 senses include the sense of sight, smell, taste, touch and hear, that interact and influence
each other when before you start eating.
Your SIGHT kick starts once it has set eyes on the meal because they get attracted to whatever they are naturally drawn to. So if you’ve ordered a steak, look at the colours, the shape of the cut of the meat, the ribbons of steam if its sizzling hot by simply pausing.
Food doesn’t taste good if you can’t SMELL it because your sense of smell literally makes 70% of your food experience. We liberate ourselves by infusing our sense of smell with aromatic flavours that comes from the freshness of herbs, garlic and onions etc. Notice what you smell and let it creep into the crevices of your brain. Some scents arouse nostalgia and remind you of something or someone, so let them wave in your head. You’re getting there.
Your sense of TASTE increases when you smell your food. Merely chewing is not going to give you the idea that a small bite to taste the individual flavours and textures combine. Breathing between bites and relishing each mouthful of joy can tell you what you’re tasting; is your food salty, sweet, bitter, sour or umami? Give each bite a chance to play its role on your palette.
There is nothing more delightful than a simmering hot plate of food becase your sense of TOUCH can help you reclaim the sensations you feel when you touch a bowl, a spoon or a grill. And that later heightens when you incorporate your fingers, your tongue to taste, your teeth to chew to feel the texture of the food. We’re often in a hurry to devour anything and everything that we forgot to realise that if making food is an art, eating it is science, it has its dynamics, abundances and repercussions.
The sound of no judgments, food broken and swallowed waiting to be dispersed as energy and molecules as you connect with yourself after a fill is risen by the sense of listening or HEARING. We don’t think how food affects our emotions and brings all the thoughts into play because we don’t wait. Imagine the first bite when you eat chips, or when you hear a sizzler with a burning steak exciting you, what’s going around you and being thankful for what you just do is perhaps the greatest experience of all.
In a nutshell, the very awareness of everything around you stimulating as you appreciate your breakfast, lunch and dinner by incorporating even one sense absolutely focused towards is a lesson of mindfulness and once you’ve achieved that state of moment-by-moment awareness, you feel good about yourself, stress less and enjoy your own company!
