Consciousness Is Delicious
AKA, Why I love mindful eating
To do anything with mindfulness means to behave in a way that’s deliberate and intentional; conscious of its causes and outcomes, with clarified self-awareness.
To eat mindfully, then, is to recognize not just the textures, tastes, smells, and sensory qualities of your food, but the full journey this food has taken to being on your plate. Ready to go on a true culinary adventure?
To me, mindful eating is acknowledging that each piece of squash I eat in my stir-fry started as a tiny seed, was meticulously cultivated by a human being I will probably never meet, nourished by the perfect combination of sun and rain, plucked from its cozy home in the ground, transported vast distances by another human in a giant metal machine, and placed on the shelf of my grocery store before a happy exchange between me and the cashier. That is, of course, assuming you put squash in your stir-fry. Highly recommend it!
So that’s some context we can appreciate on how the food got on our plate. That’s part 1 of mindful eating. Part 2 is then honoring the genius of the body, where chewing and swallowing the squash will initiate a process of transformation that is so beautiful and so intricate, that it almost seems to be stolen from a science fiction novel.
Somehow through a miraculous act of magic, my body will convert this creamy yellow squash into consciousness. Imagine you were an alien, and someone was explaining the process of digestion to you for the first time. With each bite of food, the delicious sensory explosion of squash yumminess is literally becoming my conscious thoughts. My body transforms the squash into the thoughts in my mind, painting the colors of my vision. Each bite stokes the flame of my breath and gives me the energy to move forward in this world. The squash is creating the scaffolding for the library of my memories, and it’s also becoming the memories themselves. My entire universe of emotions; anger, love, greed, joy, stress, and jubilation lives in that one bite of squash. That is, until it’s pooped out… But that’s a conversation for another time, alien dude.
Phew, are we eating stir-fry here or dropping a tab of acid? By golly gosh, there are infinite layers of depth to dive into with each forkful. And we haven’t even gotten to bringing mindfulness to the deliciousness of the food itself!
It would be one thing if this insane phenomenon happened through osmosis, where we simply absorbed the energy from our environment. Or, if we fueled ourselves like cars, guzzling tasteless fuel into our bodies. But the fact is that we actually get to enjoy the process of self-creation. It’s tasteful! We get to power our awareness with things like pasta, and burritos, and chocolate, and Thai coconut curry. And squash! Consciousness is delicious — I’d say humans scored big on that one.
So when I practice mindful eating, these ideas and understandings aren’t just trippy concepts in my mind — they are felt understandings that enrich my gratitude for the meal and deepen my capacity to enjoy the flavors. I feel more connected to my food, and savor each bite for the miracle that it is.
As it happens, appreciating the majesty of this mindful eating process becomes infinitely more difficult when The Office is on. In that case, I’ll probably just inhale my food and not even realize I was eating until I’m done.
So there you have it. My simplified view of what it means to mindfully chow down on some nom-nomz. Oh, and that’s just eating squash. Just wait til you try it with mushrooms!🎈
Nate Macanian is a mindfulness teacher and writer from New York. He mostly writes about meditation and consciousness, with sporadic attempts at poetry and humor. You can see more at https://www.natemacanian.com/writing
