Mindful eating is never far from Heston Blumenthal OBE’s mind. The renowned chef wants everyone to adopt it to manage stress and help improve overall health and mental well-being. As such, he is encouraging people to take The Mindful Raisin Challenge, a short exercise designed to encourage awareness of the senses, connecting with taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound.
The profound scientific curiosity of restauranteur and chef Heston Blumenthal OBE means he has long been investigating the relationship between our bodies and food and the delicate balance between the two (especially via the microbiome¹) that plays a key role in our physical and mental health. Increasingly, he is convinced of the benefits of using mindful eating to help manage the hidden stresses in life which can have a detrimental impact on our lives.
‘Mindfulness’ is an overused term but for Heston, it has a simple but important focus: it is about paying attention in the here and now in a non-judgmental way. Being aware of your surroundings, the moment you are in, and taking pleasure from it can help to bring perspective and can counterbalance whatever may have become overwhelming in life.
Mindful eating offers a perfect opportunity to slow things down, focus on the senses, on pleasurable flavours and take time for yourself on a daily basis.
Applying mindful eating can also help change people’s relationship with food; it can reconnect individuals with what they are eating, how food feels, the smells and the distinct flavours.
Rushed eating has long been associated with poor health, including increased risk of type 2 diabetes and obesity². This is largely because the stomach takes around 20 minutes to send signals to the brain that it is full. When people eat quickly, they tend not to feel full and are more likely to overeat.
This might seem a long way from the three-Michelin-star cuisine for which Heston is famous, but he has always been exploring ways to encourage people to connect with food and with their emotions.
His ground-breaking multisensory dish, ‘Sound of the Sea,’ which is still served at The Fat Duck, involves putting on headphones and listening to the sounds of a seascape while eating a dish that looks like the shoreline and tastes of the sea.
Heston says, “Many people have had an emotional ‘moment’ while eating this dish. It takes them somewhere else – into their memories and recollections. Mindful eating doesn’t have to be about fine dining, and it doesn’t require hours of meditation. It is about taking time to enjoy anything you eat, from snacks to full meals; it is about thinking about what you are eating and using all your senses to bring new experiences and discoveries.”
Heston now invites you to take The Mindful Raisin Challenge, a short exercise that encourages awareness of the senses connecting with taste, touch, smell, sight and sound.
The process is simple: take a single raisin and, from the moment you have it between finger and thumb until you’ve consumed it, really think about every aspect of the flavours and textures of the food, every sensory second of the experience.
Heston adds, “One of the inspirations for this more mindful approach came from travelling on a plane. When I was served the airline meal, with its tray and tubs and plastic cutlery, I decided to take my time and savour every mouthful—chewing thoughtfully, patiently identifying and enjoying flavours and textures—and it was so pleasurable I went into a zone of my own. I hadn’t managed to finish by the time the stewards came to collect the tray.”
The Mindful Raisin Exercise:
- Take your raisin and, using the camera on your phone, scan the code below.
- Ask yourself how was eating that raisin different from the raisins you have eaten in the past.
- What would happen if you took this approach when eating one of your favourite foods?
¹ https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/science/microbiome
²https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323647841_DOES_EATING_FAST_CAUSE_OBESITY_AND_METABOLIC_SYNDROME and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7336266/