To enhance your sense of taste, focus on your exhale

My experience with the practice of mindful eating has helped me enjoy food more.

It has been particularly fascinating to explore how paying attention to my breathing while eating affects my sense of taste.

Many people are aware that our sense of smell is essential to our sense of taste. We can observe this by noticing that food loses most of its flavor when we have a cold and we can’t smell anything. Also, when we want to force ourselves to consume something repugnant, we plug our noses so that we can't taste it.

But here is a piece of information that has greatly improved my sense of taste and my enjoyment of food since I learned it: It is during exhalation that the olfaction (sense of smell) contribution to flavor occurs, in contrast to that of proper smell which occurs during the inhalation phase.

Apparently this happens immediately after we swallow (retro-olfaction), which is why it is important to take a deep inhale before we swallow and a long exhale afterwards.

I also like to pause after I swallow and take another breath (in and out) to savor the experience, and to remind myself to take small bites and chew them well, else 90 percent of the food I eat, I will gobble without tasting.

When I have a big bite in my mouth, I don't swallow the whole thing at once. I swallow it in bits.