-Hands should be used irrespective
Growing up in India, it was not an uncommon sight to see hands being used instead of flatware to eat and savor a meal. It has always been my desire to eat a meal with just my fingertips-gracefully, an art I have admired though never mastered, yet I continue using my hands to eat my meals.
Why?
- Eating with my hands adds a tactile dimension to my meal, I can feel the texture and temperature of my food before I taste. My hands have the perfect heat sensors- I never get extremely hot food into my mouth or burn my tongue in the process. Engaged senses results in mindful eating for me. It increases the sensual connection with my food by way of touch, taste, sight and smell. The sense of touch is particularly integral to good eating.
- Using my hands I breakdown the food in to smaller bites which makes the food easier to digest. Using the fingertips to mash up the food not only stimulates the senses but also releases the digestive juices and enzymes.
- Our skin contains bacteria, (not all bacteria is harmful). When I use my hands to eat, these bacteria from the skin gets passed to my gut and my gut flora flourishes. Healthy gut flora means a strong immune system. ( What are the other ways to improve your gut flora? Find out )
Do you use your hands to eat?
Does eating with your hand enhance your digestion, slow you down and make you calm, does it prevent you from multi-tasking (after all it is not easy to text and eat with your hands at the same time!)
What benefits do you see?
Photo Credit: Anil B.
