Pleasurable Bagel

A bagel became the subject of a personal experiment this past weekend, where I used a mindfulness exercise over about twenty minutes, to eat several bites. I rate the experiment as a success, as the memory, texture, scent, alternate crispy and chewiness of the bagel and the warmth of the butter lingers on in my memory. Use of mindfulness is to extend the pleasure of a food by eating mindfully and in smaller quantities than I am used to. It's to prevent compulsive and mindless eating. 

I might try and repeat a remembered pleasure by eating ever larger amounts of food. Pleasure eating releases ghrelin. Volume does not increase pleasure however. So even if food is not inherently addictive, it is tempting to follow the addict's course and try and coax the pleasure hormones forth in ever larger amounts. But if ghrelin is depleted, there will never be food enough to get back that remembered pleasure. 

I've multiplied the pleasure while drastically reducing the quantity.

Planning started the night before, where I made some butter shells from unsalted butter. Room temperature for a lovely spread on the toast. 

 I timed and diarized the experience.

 When I draw, I become much more intimately involved with the object, becoming aware of subtle textures and highlights. This bagel has a pleasing rough crust from the egg wash.

 Buttered!

The bite used for the mindfulness exercise. There was a pleasing springiness. The crust, lovely to crunch down on. Because of the duration of the exercise, I became more aware of how the chewy center stuck to my teeth. Endured, really.

Here is the mindfulness clip I used. I realized in planning that with diarizing and capturing the experience, I could not afford to pause to read a script. So I used this YouTube. 

Try this yourself and see if your pleasure is not multiplied many times over, with less food.