In the third part of a monthlong series, Pete Wells and experts say a healthier diet begins with understanding what drives your eating, and slowing down.
Reset Your Appetite This is the third of four articles by Pete Wells, appearing each Monday in January, about how he developed healthier eating habits. The first focused on reducing sugar consumption, and the second on stocking the home with the right foods.
Once I resolved to eat better, I got curious about using behavioral psychology to help change my habits. It wasn’t long before I heard about mindful eating, an approach rooted in Buddhist practice that tries to repair the imbalances in our diets through calm attentiveness.
And when you study mindful eating, sooner or later you find out about the Raisin Meditation. It has been taught at Harvard, Brown, Duke and other schools. Diet books recommend it. A number of YouTube videos demonstrate it.
In the Raisin Meditation, you eat a single raisin more slowly and deliberately than you might have thought possible. First, you look at the raisin — really look, taking in its shape, its size, its color and its creases. Then, you hold the raisin to your nose and notice how it smells. Now, you put the raisin in your mouth to investigate how it feels, exploring it with your tongue and palate.
When your mouth is thoroughly acquainted with the raisin, you may take a single bite. Stop and assess how this has changed things. At this point, you can chew the raisin and eventually swallow it, paying close attention to all the accompanying sensations and aftertastes, even the shreds of raisin skin that cling to your teeth.
After 12 years as a restaurant critic at The Times, I thought I was an old hand at methodical sensory analysis. But there is more to the Raisin Meditation than stop-motion chewing. In the version of the…