Cooking and living

A recent review on the psychology of diet by Mutsuko Ohnishi, a researcher at Harvard Univ., told that, through doperminergic sysytem in the brain, we get pleasure when taking something sweet etc. Fat individuals are told to be sensitive in this pathway. It is reported to be comparable to the condition in narcotic addicts. We may change the habit of eating with training even in adulthood. Serotonin is an antagonistic neurotransmitter to dopermine. It could suppress too much appetite. We should balance these pathways through getting pleasure with achieving things for cooking or gettig foods etc in stead of taking fast foods etc.

I often think it is related with our lives how to eat and what to eat. We could get anything easily for meals at supermarkets or convenience stores. Those fast foods are always high in the contents of calory as well as fat. This convenience might have destroyed a part of our lives. In the prehistoric era, we had to get foods for the day in order to survive. That labor to get foods must have been an essential part of our lives, I believe. We could not or should not return that way of life at present. But cooking and enjoying meal together with family might not be replaceable to any convenience.

For the past couple of years, I have been cooking for family almost everyday. I feel blessed with a kind of pleasure in living in this contribution to family. A sense of deep satisfaction. I found the word "diet" stood for "the way of living" in old Greek in the dictionery. Ancient people must have realized this profound relationship between eating and living.