The Nuance
Cooking Is the Ultimate Antidote
Research suggests preparing your own meals is a habit that can lead to meaningful mind and body benefits
In his 2013 bestseller Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Moss describes a concept food scientists refer to as the “bliss point.” The bliss point is the concentration or ratio of pleasurable flavors that produces optimal levels of eater enjoyment and, ultimately, craving.
Salty, sugary, fatty flavors are ones the human brain is genetically hardwired to like most, and the ones that tend to induce a state of gotta-have-more bliss. In nature, the presence of these flavors usually indicates that a food is nutritious and safe to eat. But in nature, foods that contain an abundance of these flavors are either scarce or possess other qualities that put the brakes on overconsumption. The same is not true when it comes to the packaged or prepared foods that fill the shelves and menus of today’s food retailers.
Research from the National Institutes of Health has found that, when a person eats something sweet or salty or fatty, this experience triggers many of the same reward systems and corresponding neurochemical swings that are set off by opioids and other highly addictive…
