Open Door Retreat

I got Jessica Seinfield’s book “Deceptively Delicious” for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and made my first recipe tonight. The book centers around pureeing vegetables and then “hiding” them in common foods that your family will eat.

Tonight I added cauliflower to our mashed potatoes. I also had chicken nuggets that had broccoli under the bread crumbs. Needless to say, my little munchkins still noticed the green. “What’s that green on my nugget?” one of my boys asked. I told him that it was Green Batman Power Powder to make him strong. He ate them all immediately.

With that experience in the back of my mind, I did some research on line and found an article supporting my actions.

The Power of Positive Thinking

“Adding a few tantalizing words can dramatically increase the appeal of a food, writes Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, in a new column on the MSNBC website. Dr. Wansink, author of the popular book “Mindless Eating,” says tasty descriptors help condition reluctant eaters to accept new foods. The trick of using sensory words like “tender,” “succulent” and “velvety’’ to describe foods is called “confirmation bias,” he says.

“If you say something is juicy, people almost unconsciously turn up their ‘juicy sensors’ when they taste the food,’’ he writes. “Once these taste sensors are activated, people become preprogrammed to think a dish tastes good.’’

The idea is backed up by research. At the Cornell lab, Dr. Wansink and his colleagues offered six different foods to cafeteria diners on different days for six weeks — but they changed the names. Sometimes they served “red beans and rice” and “seafood fillet.”
Other days they served “Traditional Cajun Red Beans With Rice” and “Succulent Italian Seafood Fillet.”

After eating, diners rated the foods. Foods with fancier names were rated as more appealing and tastier than the identical foods with the less enticing labels, he says.

How does this all tie into addiction and rehabilitation? The power of the brain and positive thinking! If you think about things in a different manner, your actions will trigger positive thoughts in your brain.

For example, if you despise exercise, think of each drop of sweat as another purging of the toxins in your body. With every step, you are creating a surge of positive energy and healing powers throughout your body. I bet you will be amazed at how far you can go with a positive outlook!

Eating healthy has an incredible impact on the health of the body and mind – from the spiritual plane all the way up to and including our chemical composition. That is why we at Open Door women’s addiction recovery center feel it is important to integrate health eating and cooking classes into our relapse prevention programs.