Mindful Cooking and Eating

What is it?

• Cooking and/or eating food as a spiritual practice.
• Eating in a non-hurried, attentive way; physical connecting with spiritual.
• Using all senses to fully and gratefully experience the unique flavors, textures, colors, fragrances of food.
• Recognizing the sources of our food.  Connecting with the people who have made the food possible.
• Experiencing food prayerfully with compassion for those who have little or nothing to eat.

Why is it important?

• We live in a sacred universe.  The physical elements that sustain our bodies, the fruits, grains, vegetables, and animals are sacred in their beauty and
  their life sustaining capacities.  If we do not know this we are spiritually impoverished.
• Food is a vital commodity we take for granted.  Paying attention can enrich the meaning of an ordinary, daily ritual.
• Mindful eating slows us down, wakes up our sense, and turns a simple meal into a feast to be savored and appreciated.
• We are disconnected from the land, fields, oceans, gardens, and animals from which our food comes.  Food comes to us wrapped, boxed, canned, or frozen from the grocery store.  Eating mindfully connects us with the life of the earth, things that grow, the miracle of seeds, plants, sun, water, and soil, with the animals, birds, and fish who give their lives so we can stay alive.
• We are also insulated from the thousands of people who plant, cultivate, harvest, process, package, and transport our food.  Some of these persons are the poor of the earth.  Eating with awareness of our hands, faces, and bodies makes us aware of our connection with strangers who make it possible for us to eat this particular salad, casserole, or soup.  Awareness of the global family can transform us toward simplicity, generosity, and justice.
• Jesus’ ministry frequently involved food or eating.  Meals are natural times for connecting with our own spiritual hungers and thirsts.

Suggestions for Practice

1. Mindfulness Eating on the go.  Decide to pay attention to at least one food in each of your meals during the day.  Before beginning, offer a brief, silent prayer that you will be especially aware of the food you’ve chosen.  Then:
   
   

   •   notice everything about this food while eating slowly, gratefully

   •   use all senses to experience the food’s texture, shape, color, fragrance

   •   imagine the food’s journey (where was it grown, what did it look like while growing, who planted, harvested, processed, packaged it?)

   •   say thank you to God and to those who grew, processed, prepared the food

2. Preparing a Mindfulness Meal.  Choose a relaxed time and setting.  Chose a menu that connects you with people of other cultures and economic levels.  Shop carefully and calmly, using senses to enjoy the unique shapes, colors, fragrances of ingredients.  Experience the food as it is prepared: pungent spices, tear-producing onions, peels, layers, seeds and sections that must be washed, cut, chopped, sautéed.  Be fascinated by the unique details of each food.  Be aware of its history, its life in the field or orchard, the machines and hands that have handled it, the wonder of how this particular food exists at all as part of God's vast creation.  Be thankful for the flavors that blend together as individual foods are combined into a new creation.  Prepare a simple table setting with candles or other symbols. 
3. Explore scriptures: Jesus and food, eating, meal imagery (bread of life, great banquet, Last Supper, prodigal’s return, feeding 5,000 and many others..                  

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Additional Resources 

The Greatest Table by Michael J. Rosen
The Art of Mindful Living and Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hahn