90 percent of the food we eat, we gobble without tasting

Why there should be no excuses for eating a lot of something I like

Mindful eating led me to notice that a small bite tastes just the same as a big bite and that 10 peanuts taste just the same as one peanut. I recently began trying to estimate how much of a bite goes un-tasted. It seems to me that most of the food we eat we gobble without tasting, possibly up to 90 percent. Even if I try to chew very slowly and carefully, I find that a large percentage of any bite that I put into my mouth, I will wind up swallowing without really tasting. This should refute any excuse that if I like a certain food, I have to eat large portions of it in order to enjoy it. I don't need to eat a lot, I just need to eat it slowly, and even then, I will be swallowing a lot of it without tasting it.

The only way I can really taste most of a bite before swallowing it is to do the "raisin meditation," which means that each meal would take at least 3 hours.

Mindful eating also led to notice that breathing and smelling are essential to tasting. The more you breathe while you are chewing a bite, the more you taste and enjoy it.

As the Swedish Proverb goes: Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours.

The next time I am having a meal with someone and they say, "You didn't eat much," I will say, "With the little that I ate, I bet I enjoyed it more and tasted more of it than you did."