Another appetizer?
Are you just hungry? Then you will probably curse me right away. A few weeks ago, friends in southern Germany served up a gourmet menu that I still love. For starters there were canapes with eel, then goose liver pate. Followed red mullet on couscous and a sorbet of papaya with thyme. Then a magnificent venison was served. Then the desserts! Coconut rice with orange, followed by mousse au chocolat. The selection of French cheeses was missing as little as the chocolates for coffee. Sounds like sheer gluttony, right? Fats, fats and again fats.
After the stomach-cleaning Grappa at the end we fell silent devoutly. The silence of the gourmets. We did not feel like stirring for an hour. Around midnight we went for a walk under the starry sky. Wonderful! The whole week I still consumed the memory. Maybe you mean now, once a year you can do something like that and then maybe for Christmas. But you would have liked to have it, right? At least that's how I feel when I read Donna Leon's Brunetti thrillers. The commissioner is always sitting with his family and eating the biggest delicacies, as if no criminals were running around in Venice. He does not care at the moment, he is a gourmet and knows his analytical skills do not really suffer from good food. Maybe even increase? I think he's right.
You can learn to relish
A series of sentences about food have been so incessantly implanted in us as if they belonged to the universal knowledge of humanity. For example: Fat food is unhealthy. Sugar makes you fat and your teeth are broken. Salt drives up blood pressure. Eggs are cholesterol bombs. Many people actually stick to it, the idea of eating unhealthy food is worse for them than overshadowing their bank account. Today we know that many of these beliefs we know from childhood are half-baked. Even nutritionists assume that enjoyment - if it is not just for daily binging - has a positive effect.
"Pleasure in eating is just a good mood - and in society a fortiori," says Antje Gahl of the German Nutrition Society. "If you can really enjoy, you may do more for your health than if you keep putting yourself through new regulations." If we have nutrition tables right next to the stove, drawing our personal vitamin balance every night, constantly thinking about calories and extra pounds, we are undoubtedly brilliant accountants of our daily energy intake - but otherwise? This thought does not make fun at all, and a thick piece of Sacher cake appears in front of my eye. I just have to buy it ...
Meanwhile, there are several studies on "mood food", so food that affects our mood. Sweets like chocolate or cake cause the blood sugar level to skyrocket. Endorphins are released - good mood is spreading. American researchers also found that dark chocolate, when enjoyed in moderation, is good for the heart: it contains many flavonoids, phytochemicals that protect the heart vessels and arteries.
Also in red wine are flavonoids, and that a glass of wine is good for eating, you probably already knew. There are also informative studies on the relationship between blood pressure and salt: Only every second high-pressure patient who restricts his or her intake of salt, the blood pressure drops. So anyone who thinks that bland food is automatically healthy, mortifies itself without need. When we stand by the stove and taste our asparagus soup, we should also rely on our sense of taste and not count in mind the grains of salt in the soup. And finally, nuts, which are considered as fattening: almonds, pistachios or walnuts, for example, contain many polyunsaturated fatty acids, which in turn lower the cholesterol in the blood.
So, many foods that taste good and are considered to be sin are not as harmful as we think, some can even do good to the body - all a matter of dose. Maybe we should do it more often with Commissario Brunetti: more anarchy on the plate, less self-censorship. What makes you feel happy, triggers happiness, delighted, unleashed, can not be completely wrong. If we keep letting the health man hang out, develop guilty feelings while eating, we only slow ourselves down. Which, in turn, leads to discomfort that breaks track elsewhere. However, if you believe that you are actually too fat and unhealthy, make up an opulent menu - in your imagination. Head cinema for enjoying.Then it can happen that you suddenly jump up and start cooking. But would that really be that bad?
