Chew Your Food…For Thought!
Digesting the information we consume
We have been taught from a very young age that we need to chew our food. Our ancestors used to do it, our grandparents’s did it with great conviction and purpose.
As the essential First step of digestion, chewing food well helps with;
- swallowing the food easily
- breaking food down in to smaller pieces so that the gastric juices in the stomach can break it down further
- absorbing nutrients and fluids to the gastrointestinal tract
- well digested food means that you are satiated and are less likely to consume junk food thus increase caloric intake
- maintaining a healthy weight
- its good for teeth
- helps enjoy and taste food better
In addition to this, there is also a certain level of presence required to chew our food purposefully which brings us to the present moment. Since eating has become such a unconscious activity in our modern day distraction filled lifestyle, the conscious effort of chewing food also helps us practice mindfulness.
No one can refute the benefits of chewing ‘food for the stomach’ but what about chewing ‘food for thought’. Just like the food that we eat gets processed in our stomach and eventually goes into shaping and maintaining our physical bodies; the ideas, opinions, thoughts and words that we consume gets processed and eventually goes into shaping our mental, emotional and spiritual bodies.
Given the amount of information, ideas, advertising and content that we are fed on a daily basis, it is most prudent that we make the effort to chew all this food for thought as well. Just like the benefits of chewing our food, there are benefits of chewing our thoughts as well;
- it helps process the information better by breaking it down in to smaller pieces
- breaking information down before swallowing means that we get to ‘taste’ the information longer. This helps us form an opinion about if we like this kind of ‘thought-food’ or not
- it helps maintain a healthy and balanced worldview
- being satiated with well formed ideas and information means that you will be less likely to entertain ‘junk ideas’
- constantly chewing on information ensures that your brain and faculties of critical thought remain sharp and well conditioned
- when you take the time to process information rather than just swallow it whole in an unconscious feeding frenzy, you learn to appreciate the quality of the thoughts and ideas that you put into your head
- ultimately, the food-thoughts that get absorbed into our psychological systems will be degraded finely and independently. Thereby eliminating the possibility of unconsciously digesting information and ideas that will be detrimental to our mental health.
In this day and age where we just swallow our food because we are so busy doing things while we eat i.e working, watching TV, Netflix, Social Media etc we are distracted and we are not present! We forego one of the most basic, rudimentary functions of human behavior throughout evolution, chewing, and we just swallow our food. Just like we swallow ideologies, prejudices etc without analysing them.
How conscious and mindful we are when consuming the buffet of ‘food for thought’ that we are being served on a daily basis will determine the quality of our mental health and eventually our cognitive longevity as well.
So…please Chew your Food!
