An Introduction to Mindful Eating

When was the last time you tasted your food? By this, I don’t mean eating it, but really slowing down and paying attention to the smell, texture, and taste — and how it made you feel. It’s easy to get lost in daily habits, but pausing to eat mindfully — whether it involves a single raisin (see below) or a regular mealtime practice — can bring all sorts of benefits.

What is Mindful Eating?

Mindfulness is “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, non-judgmentally”, as defined by Jon Kabat-Zimm, creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. This practice allows one to be fully present in the moment, and there is some research demonstrating the potential benefits of practicing mindfulness on overall health. Many of us equate this practice with the act of meditation, but what if we extended these principles to the act of eating? Rather than mindlessly eating a meal, what would happen if we were to be fully connected, in the moment, to the experience?

Mindful eating involves bringing our awareness to the table. According to The Center for Mindful Eating, “it’s about being fully aware of our eating experiences with a sense of nonjudgmental observation, curiosity, and acceptance”. It is simply paying attention to your food, how it makes you feel, your level of hunger, and your feelings of satiety. Being fully present during eating involves using all of your senses. This could include engaging your sense of smell, exploring the texture of the food, distinguishing between the tastes of salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and savory. Notice, without judging, what feelings arise about the food. This practice could also potentially free individuals from emotional reactions tied to specific foods.

Pausing to consider where your food came from can create a deeper connection to the meal too. This could mean taking a moment to imagine where the food was grown, and the care taken by the people who tended it. Think about how the food got from its original location to you: Was it grown at a local farm, or did it travel halfway around the world to get to your plate? Did you prepare the meal yourself, or was it prepared by someone else? Developing this connection to the origins of your food may guide decisions about future meals. Taking a moment of gratitude to all those involved is a powerful mindful practice.

Mindful eating is not a restrictive diet or about eating specific foods. It is also not about aiming for a specific outcome as a result of eating behaviors, as this would take you away from being present in that moment. The opposite of mindful eating, or mindless eating, involves eating while multitasking, ignoring your body’s hunger and satiety cues, and eating foods that may not make you feel good.

Biological Versus Emotional Hunger

Hunger can show up as a physical feeling or be driven by an emotional state.

The sound of your stomach growling, energy levels dropping, trouble staying focused, even becoming “hangry,” are all biological signals from our bodies telling us that it’s time to eat. Food is one of the most basic necessities of life. It provides the energy that keeps us alive. Unlike plants that can make their own food through the process of photosynthesis, we must consume food in order to sustain us. These signals from the body are in response to physical states, such as your blood sugar, how empty your stomach is, and some hormones and processes in your brain.

In contrast, sometimes we eat because of emotional states rather than physical states. Emotional cues from the body that may make us want to reach for something to eat include boredom, stress, sadness, loneliness, and others. Food can act as a distraction from the emotion or provide a temporary feeling of comfort. Eating in response to our emotions can lead to eating more than if we were only trying to satisfy our biological need to eat. Emotional eating can often be tied to mindless eating.

Benefits of Practicing Mindful Eating

It’s possible that mindful eating could eliminate some of society’s “food rules”. Current diet culture focuses on the outcomes associated with eating. Mindful eating shifts that focus back to the present. It involves letting go of expectations around food and accepting whatever feelings come up in the moment. It requires that the practitioners check in with the cues from their bodies.

Listening to our own bodies rather than external forces can feel empowering. Paying attention to how we feel when we eat certain foods can improve our digestion, if we include more of the foods that make us feel good into our diet. Mindful eating could result in a greater appreciation for the food we eat, bringing awareness to the journey the food took to get to our plate. It may also help us to recognize why we might be choosing to eat, whether it’s for biological hunger, or other emotional reasons, which in turn may help us to implement healthier coping mechanisms.

Mindful Eating Exercise: Tasting a Raisin

The Mindfully Eating a Raisin exercise, adapted from Jon Kabat-Zinn and the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts:

Place a few raisins in your hand. Begin to explore the raisins using all of your senses. Do not judge the raisins or the exercise. Instead, just stay curious. Focus on seeing the raisin, as if you’ve never seen them before. Notice the color. Next, explore the texture, feeling any softness, hardness, coarseness, or smoothness. Take the raisin beneath your nose and carefully notice the smell of it. Bring one of the raisins to one ear, squeeze it, roll it around, and hear if there is any sound coming from it. Slowly bring the raisin to your mouth. Perhaps becoming aware of your mouth-watering. Gently place the raisin in your mouth. Place it on your tongue, without biting it. Simply explore the sensations. When you’re ready, bite into the raisin. Notice the tastes it releases. Slowly chew the raisin. Be aware of the saliva in your mouth and how the raisin changes in consistency as you chew. When you feel ready to swallow, consciously notice the intention to swallow, sensing the raisin moving down to your throat and into your esophagus on its way to your stomach.

At the conclusion of this exercise, reflect on any thoughts or sensations that came up. What was your experience of eating with such focused attention on a single piece of food? Try the raisin exercise on your own or with your family. You can find a guided audio of the experiment here. Repeat the exercise, or try to practice mindful eating at a meal, and notice any changes in awareness of the flavors, textures, temperatures of the food. You can also practice tuning into your body’s sensations associated with eating, such as hunger or fullness.

For more information about mindful eating principles, head over to The Center for Mindful Eating. For guided mindful eating meditations, check out The Basic Mindfulness Meditation and more by Shambhala Productions at (meditations by Jan Chozen Barys, MD — author of the book, Mindful Eating).

Tamara Soerensen recently earned her master’s degree at Bastyr University and is completing a dietetic internship at the Mayo Clinic. After working both in the healthcare field and the restaurant industry, she returned to school to focus her attention on learning about the effects nutrition can have on the body.