Eating healthy becomes more and more popular these days. It's on the media, on the food labels and packages, on Facebook which is flooded by personal tips for healthy eating. The good thing is that people become more and more aware that food choices are directly linked to health. The bad thing is that many people who do not have professional qualifications give advices on healthy eating based only on their personal experience. This is certainly an issue in itself but is not the subject of this post. Actually, you may read more on the topic in Nadia's blog over here.
What I want to write about today is one aspect of healthy eating that is quite often ignored by most advocates of healthy eating. What you eat is certainly important but not less important is how you eat.
Shortly said good health equals good digestion. No matter how clean, healthy and nutritious your food is, if you don't assimilate the nutrients well and don't eliminate the wastes timely, you end up sick.
Good digestion depends on many things but one of the most important factors is how you eat your food. It is a fact that most of us are high-speed living, multitasking persons. Meals somehow fit in our schedules in between everything else. You may nibble on a breakfast while checking your emails or on the road to work; have lunch while talking on the phone or hurrying up for a meeting and serve dinner in front of the TV set to enjoy it together with your favourite series or reality show.
The problem with this pattern of eating is that your attention is always split and never focused on the food itself. The more sensations you experience, the less aware you are of what you eat which triggers dangerous pitfalls.
Mindless eating pitfalls
- you don't chew well thus skipping the first part of digestion and overloading the other organs down the chain
- you don't experience fully the taste, smell and texture of your food i.e. you enjoy it less
- you lose track of how much you have eaten and end up eating more than your body needs
