Bipolar medication can cause you to put on the pounds big-time. That was the case for me, and it proved difficult to lose it by exercise alone. So I’m on the “fat-jab”.
Inevitably, being me, I’ve begun to see my own body as a kind of scientific test case and have been observing the process closely. Feeling less driven by appetite has made me more aware of my tastebuds and how hunger acts upon me. I have found myself eating less, but with more consideration and awareness. More mindfulness.
Confession time: I used to experience the very opposite of mindfulness – moments of wall-punching, phone-biting fury. Tipped over the edge by sometimes the littlest thing. I hadn’t at that point been diagnosed with bipolar, so all I knew was that I was out of control. But I also knew of something that could bring me back to myself.
A raisin.
You can actually try this for yourself (and you don’t need to be angry to do it). Take a raisin and concentrate on every aspect of it: the look, the texture of the skin, roll it between your fingers, take a sniff, feel it on the teeth as you bite in, monitor the effect on the senses and each wave of flavour as it comes through.
Do it all slooooooowly and concentratedly and – for me at least – calmness descends. I am in the moment. I feel relaxed, satisfied, happy.
I called this The Mindful Raisin. And it started me thinking: if a single tiny raisin can do all that, what might be the benefits of eating like this on a more regular or greater scale?
Obviously eating a raisin, no matter how carefully and mindfully, is hardly a rigorous scientific experiment.
But then, many of my discoveries and inventions have come from following my instincts, no matter how counterintuitive. (Bacon-and-egg ice cream came from deliberately not following ice-cream-making rules in order to see what would happen, and then being receptive to the childhood memories the result evoked.)
It made sense to me that, if mood affects our food choices, then our food choices can have an effect on our moods. It might well be a two-way street.
Recently, though, science has introduced a new strand to our eating habits , with the rapid rise in the use of a variety of appetite suppressants. Stats show that, for nearly 40 per cent of us, weight loss is a top priority. And, already, over 1.5 million people in the UK are using weight-loss drugs to achieve this.
Most of us know someone who’s choosing this route. And now you know another because, as I revealed at the start of this piece, I’m one of them. As a restaurateur, I realise this is going to have a huge impact on how we eat and, indeed, on eating out in general.
Throughout culinary history, there have been moments where a radical change in eating habits has taken place. Italian Renaissance chefs swept away the heavily spiced potages of the Middle Ages. Nouvelle cuisine introduced a lighter, fresher way of cooking. We might well be at another of those moments. As a chef, this is a big challenge but a thrilling one – an opportunity to rethink, reexamine, reinvent.
For a long time I’ve been exploring the concept of mindful eating, but in the past, using the M-word was likely to provoke scepticism if not derision.
Now, though, it feels like we’re all more accepting and ready for this idea. For a variety of reasons – weight-loss drugs, our ever-expanding understanding of the microbiome, or just an impulse to eat healthier – it’s no longer seen as marginal mumbo-jumbo.
So, in recent months, me and my team have been reviewing the menu at The Fat Duck – plates, portions, presentation – looking for the best way to introduce a version that offers an alternative for anyone looking for something smaller (but still perfectly formed).
I believe what we’ve come up with does exactly that, but what most excites me about this menu is that having a little less of everything on the plate gives a great opportunity to take your time, tune in to your senses and fully focus on the food. The Mindful Raisin – but on a bigger scale.
Obviously I can’t give a gastronomic guarantee that it’ll help people’s wellbeing, but I can’t wait to see how they respond.
This week I have been…
Cooking… You’d be surprised how rarely chefs get time to cook. When I do, I go for a recipe that captures everything cooking’s about – full of aromas, associations and lengthy, languid preparation.
In France that’s got to be ratatouille: I can get all the ingredients just a few metres from my door and spend half a day in the kitchen chopping, roasting and simmering for hours to create a concentrated tomato compote to be mixed with finely chopped, separately cooked Mediterranean veg and then baked for 15 minutes or so. It’s a deeply rewarding experience – a kind of culinary therapy – and it tastes great too. To be eaten rewatching Ratatouille, which is one of the best films about life in the kitchen that I know of.
Watching… One of my biggest inspirations is a talk by the brilliant Sir Ken Robinson, called “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”. It’s about much more than just education: it explores nothing less than health, wellbeing and the future of the human race, and does so with clarity and humour, arguing persuasively and eloquently that everything depends on our protection and promotion of the human imagination. I watch it on YouTube all the time, and it still makes me laugh, makes me cry and makes me think.
Tasting… These days I live principally in France, not far from the place that first inspired me to become a chef when I was just 16 years old. But my restaurants are essentially an expression of my tastebuds so I’m forever back in Bray, sitting at a table at The Fat Duck before service: tasting, testing, tweaking whatever dishes we’re working on.
It’s an intense and complex process because, for me and my team, technical precision and perfection is just the start of creating a dish. Above all, with my food I’m seeking to generate emotions, and finding that trigger is both tantalising and tricky.
‘The Mindful Experience’ menu is available now at The Fat Duck thefatduck.co.uk/the-mindful-experience
Hence then, the article about heston blumenthal how i came back from wall punching fury was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Heston Blumenthal: How I came back from wall-punching fury )
Also on site :
- OpenAI pauses Sora video generations of Martin Luther King Jr.
- Carmakers push to secure chips as China trade spat escalates
- Temu: MF Doom Estate’s ‘Inflammatory’ Counterfeit Merch Lawsuit Has a ‘Fundamental Problem’