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Top 7 Tips to Fully Enjoying Your Every Meal

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Jason F. Hopkins
Top 7 Tips to Fully Enjoying Your Every Meal

When it comes to enjoying your meal, there’s far more to it than just the ingredients and your own preferences. You must have noticed that even when it comes to the same meal (pizza from the same pizza place that tastes exactly the same every time), you don’t always enjoy it equally. Now, while you may try to attribute this to your current mood, the truth is that there’s much more to it than that. Being able to fully enjoy your every meal is a proper science and if you start understanding all the factors that go into it, you can start enjoying your meals much more often. With that in mind and without further ado, here are the top seven tips that you need to abide by.

  • The difference between taste and flavour

The first thing you need to do is learn how to distinguish between taste and flavour. You see, the taste is something objective, almost mechanical. It is a phenomenon that happens when a compound found in food activates sensory cells. For instance, you taste something sweet and your receptors activate centres in your brain that are in charge of sweet. The flavour, on the other hand, is a far more subjective category. It’s a combination of taste, odour and the texture of the meal. It’s also heavily affected by any preconception that you may have about the meal in question. In other words, what you expect the food to taste, might affect the final outcome. This is also why foodies tend to enjoy new meals far more often.

  • Roleplaying

One of the things a lot of people find helpful is using their imagination as a secret ingredient. For some people, an ordinary meal can become a proper delicacy if they manage to envision it as a course in a Michelin 3-star restaurant. Others may want to travel in their mind to a distant location from which the course originates in order to pretend that they’re eating the authentic local delicacy. Sometimes, imagining that you’re sharing a meal with your favourite celebrity or that your meal is prepared by your favourite celebrity-chef might make a huge difference, as well.

  • Music

Another thing you need to understand is that music can, indeed, affect your sense of taste. Previously, we’ve talked about roleplaying and by playing a certain tune, you can set a mood. Also, there’s some science behind the correlation behind the sense of taste and the ambient noise. For instance, a high volume (high decibel level), your taste perception will go down significantly. This will result in a reduced sense of flavour. In other words, not only is the soundtrack important but the volume that you set, as well.

  • The right drink

Other than this, it’s well-known that different foods go well along with different courses. For instance, red wine goes along splendidly with red meat. In fact, low alcohol (like any kind of wine) goes great with spicy food. Champagne and oysters are a natural combo, while white wine, in general, is ideal as a companion to the majority of fish-based dishes. Alcoholic beverages, although the most popular on this list, is definitely not all. Pizza and Coca-Cola are just perfect together, which is why this is one of the most common combos that marketers behind Coca-Cola’s campaigns use for their advertising.

  • Alcohol and digestion

Alcohol

Alcoholic beverages, in general, are also known to affect the digestion of the meal that you’re currently enjoying. For instance, slivovitz brandy is renowned as one of the most outstanding aperitifs in the world. This is why in a lot of countries; it is considered a customary beverage to consume while waiting for the meal to arrive. On the other hand, wine brandy is known to help with digestion, which is why the majority of connoisseurs recommend that it should be taken right after the meal. The above-discussed Coca-Cola also helps with the digestion, which makes it into an ideal post-meal beverage.

  • Schedule your meals

Meals

Previously, we’ve already mentioned expectations and anticipations as major factors in enjoying your meals. So, why not use regular daily scheduling of meals in order to nurture this. For starters, if you already know that your favourite meal of the day is supposed to be at 4 PM, you can start looking forward to it for hours in advance. Will this make you hungrier? Sure. Nevertheless, it will also make you enjoy your meals to the fullest. Going to the restaurant is also something that you can schedule and look forward to for the better part of the week. It all comes down to managing your expectations so that they work for you and not against you.

  • Don’t push it

When something is your favourite meal, the only natural urge is to want to eat it as often as possible. Still, this is a horrible idea. A lot of bodybuilders feel outright disgust towards chicken breasts after they retire, some of them never even feel the urge to eat it again for the rest of their lives. Why? Well, because they ate them several times every day. Even if you don’t overeat it to this extreme, there’s still the risk of turning something special into something mundane. So, how do you avoid this? This one’s quite easy, actually, all you have to do is enrich your menu.

In conclusion

There are two ways to channel your passion for food. The first one is by quantitative eating, which will diminish your enjoyment, make you gain weight and cause a series of health issues. The second one is to focus on the quality of the experience and enjoy every bite like it’s your last. By preparing the setting, constantly looking for new recipes and opting for alternative methods of enhancing the experience, you will have the privilege of enjoying your meals in a new and unprecedented way. The world is your oyster and, as we’ve already stated, oysters should always be consumed with a glass of ice-cold champagne.

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Jason F. Hopkins
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