* Do you ever find yourself magnetically drawn to the chocolate section of your natural foods store?
* Do you ever think, “Awe, to hell with my whole food diet today…I need that croissant!”?
Pleasure foods can sometimes give us a very necessary, temporary relief, which can ground us in sense of safety, and help us move on with a stressful day. Sometimes, comfort foods simply help us access feelings of joy and gratitude. Let’s face it. The world is way too fast-paced, hectic, and even frightening. When the pressure builds, letting ourselves enjoy our favorite foods, gives us that short retreat of pleasure that we may need to quiet our negative thoughts, and remember that everything will be okay.
I’ve recently realized that, for many people, eating pleasure foods can be key to cultivating joy in life. For some people, it’s one of the few pleasures they have left. I’ve also seen that eating with others, is many people’s most common venue for sociability. I’ve come to understand this, after 18 years on my path of discovering which foods make me feel best, day to day, situation to situation, emotion to changing emotion.
I’ll never forget how amazed I was, when I first learned that our body temperature can be controlled with food. It was a hot summer day, and I was at a friend’s house (a friend who had been studying Macrobiotics for many years). He said that the day before at his house had been so hot, that he and his wife just stayed in the shade and ate only melon during the hottest part of the day. ‘What?’, I thought. ‘Melons help you feel cool?’…Yes! Every kind of melon is hydrating to the body and has a very cooling thermal effect. In fact, most of the foods which grow at the hottest times of year, tend to cool our bodies down.
