Enjoying Great Food

The subsequent feel good emotions 

“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him…The people who give you their food give you their heart.” – Cesar Chavez (Civil rights leader)

Enjoying great food and the subsequent feel good emotions that result invariably lead to ever flowing long term feelings of wellness. 

Consider also how you feel when you are the one providing great food to someone else.

Surely, it is from this position of giving pleasure to others - an inner striving to provide, to give happiness to others that drives humankind and community spirit. It’s certainly the impetus that has kept me every day in the kitchen for nearly 40 years.

In my cafe kitchen, I have a large window and an open doorway to the front, so I often see and overhear the gratitude and praise afforded by our customers as they leave, but in many kitchens, the chefs are hidden behind the swing doors. They never get the satisfaction of hearing the thanks or recognition of this driving pleasure they have provided with their handiwork.

Eating at home especially, we all can remember happy communal occasions around the dinner table - Christmas gatherings, dinners with friends, or a garden barbecue full of chatter and smoky food smells.

As those images come back to you now, just thinking about them makes you feel great all over again even though time has passed. That’s how powerful food is in our lives, a force for good, an ingredient that binds our daily lives and acts also as a reason with which to plan our next celebration.

We don’t just eat to consume, to replenish our tired bodies with fuel and nutrients, there’s much much more than that.

We hold desires for sweet or savoury, longings for sugar or umami. We are closet gourmets, secret epicureans. Each of us have our go-to favourite foods with tenuous links of the deep memories or association and feelings it gives to us.

We eat to savour the tastes and textures, to experience the ephemeral pleasures that accompany the act of dining well. We like to know where our food comes from, so we can feel good about its provenance and understand our small part in the world.

“To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.” – François de la Rochefoucauld (French writer). “Food brings people together on many different levels. It’s nourishment of the soul and body; it’s truly love.” – Giada De Laurentis (american TV chef)

“Food to a large extent is what holds a society together and eating is closely linked to deep spiritual experiences.” – Peter Farb (Author/Naturalist)

Consider also how food binds you to your ancestry, to your roots and heritage.As a child you can remember your favorite foods or meals when you went to eat at your grandparents house. You doubtless have similar attachments to childhood meals at home.

Think for a second where that repository of culinary memories has come from. Your grandparents had similar dining experiences and fondness for certain foods too which in turn came from their grandparents. I realized very early the power of food to evoke memory, to bring people together, to transport you to other places, and I wanted to be a part of that.” – José Andrés Puerta (Spanish Chef).

Your food preferences were learnt and can probably reach back over a hundred years for a few generations, guided by your societal environments and local cultural food supply of course, but still they are your own historical lineage through food which defines your place and who you are. It helps shape you and your own place in the world. That’s the power of food in our lives, treasure it, respect it, and most importantly, give thanks to those who provided it. 

Written By Dean Sanders