Food of Love
As a play Therapist working with vulnerable children, I am always incredibly heartened by the appearance of symbols of food in children’s play. Representative of nurture, whether ice cream or soup, sausages or mash, food can signify a child’s sense of worth or desire to nurture others. So important is food to our wellbeing that feeding a child, whatever their age, is a central feature of a strand of therapy called Theraplay! Watching the power of food within therapy reminds me that food is about so much more than simply fuel for the body.
Eating should be a wholly sensory experience as cooking smells pique the appetite and prepare the stomach with the necessary juices to maximise digestion and the absorption of nutrients. We need only think about a time when you’ve had a bad cold to remind ourselves of how bland and dissatisfying eating is without the three dimensional addition of smell. Sound also helps prime us for a good meal as the (hopefully) familiar sounds of cooking signal to our brains what to expect – much as Pavlov’s dogs. But we now understand thanks to aircraft industry research, that continuous white noise actually aff ects the sensation of taste, dampening down fl avours and explaining the cliché of tasteless airplane food.
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In fact, food that tasted great and well-seasoned on land seems bland in the air – something that airlines are becoming wise to as they increase the Unami dimension - the only taste sensation seemingly unaff ected by fl ying.
Watch any of the plethora of cookery programs and you will understand the importance of the love, care and attention of the chef. For many home cooks, cooking delicious wholesome food is quite literally a gift of love. We are rightly much more aware and bothered about what we put into our bodies then when I was a child and a pasta meal meant spaghetti hoops from a can! You only have to chart changes in the Nursery Awards sector to see the propulsion of quality, locally sourced food onto the child care agenda, with a wealth of awards now dedicated to recognising the providence, health, environmental sustainability and let’s not forget the social dimensions of food. Supplying healthy yet appealing food options for the child market is now big business and even the fast food giants are keen to get on board, or if I’m being cynical, take a slice of the cake!
Then there’s the act of eating, an important stage in the process which all too easily can become a silent
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