Food is on the first level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which means its presence is essential for humans to move on to higher levels of needs such as safety, love and belonging, and more.
Section 1 | Food & Affirmation
The relationship between food and body is like that of water and plant — we need it to survive, yet too little or too much would cause harm. I grew up in China, where skinniness serves as a beauty standard for girls. I was never overweight, yet from when I could remember, I felt insecure about my body. Looking back, I was skinny, at least according to Western standards, but I remember so vividly that I would feel so ashamed of my body I no longer wanted to go to malls — I felt that I brought shame to the image of the city. When I moved away and attended boarding school, I used eating as a coping mechanism.
According to a study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders in 2019, 53% of participants reported experiencing at least one disordered eating behavior in the past year, with 37% engaging in restrictive eating behaviors such as skipping meals or severely limiting food intake.
Here are some affirmations to make peace with food and your body:
I am the only person who defines what health means to me.
I appreciate the different and unique characteristics of my body.
I release guilt and negative feelings I have about eating.
I choose self-care over self-control.
I love my body and my body loves me.
Romance
I didn’t like to cook for people I was romantically involved with because I wanted to distance my image as far as I could from an obedient Asian housewife. Ironically, my ex saw making food for him as a love language, so cook for him, I did.
If you love me, cook for me. (That sounds like manipulation)
Sometimes I would make food intentionally the day before he came, so we could enjoy the food while spending the day outside. I remember this one day, we just finished an outdoor cinema screening at 6 pm, and he was hungry so he proposed kebab for dinner.
I told him I already planned to cook him ‘red braised pork,’ which is a traditional Shanghainese dish, and I specifically scouted fresh ingredients and pork ribs for it a few days before. For some reason, it took me 5 hours to cook everything, and we ended up having dinner at 11 pm although he was already hungry at 6 pm.
If you cook for me, I will always love it. (Even when I can’t stand it beyond two bites)
Of course, he doesn’t always like the food I cooked, but he would never admit it’s not his favorite. Every time I cook, he would comment it is ‘the best’ and try to convince me with every single muscle on his face. Sometimes I could visibly see he does not like the food as he eats very little, but he just wouldn’t admit it’s bad. He knows I made everything with love and effort, and he receives the food as a token of love and a roadmap to intimacy, not as a sensoria end goal.
But just like love, some food can make you feel good, but is not good for you.
Section 2 | Quality time
Mindful Cooking, Mindful Eating
When it comes to cooking and eating, many of us tend to enter auto-pilot mode, rushing through meal prep and shoving food down our throats. When do we actually smell, observe and feel our food? Two years ago, I began exploring mindfulness with food through Headspace the meditation app, and here are some tips to share.
3 Techniques for Mindful Cooking
- Remove smartphone from the kitchen
- Be present with your senses: sounds, smells, textures, & physical sensations
- Be conscious with the ingredients
Cooking as self-care
I discovered the art of food as self-care when I lived alone in Sweden. In the first few months, I defaulted to eating out, which was pricey because Sweden does not have street food apart from ‘korv’ — hot dogs. I would also buy one meal and have it for two or three meals, which was not the best for me regarding nutritional intake. At one point I had run out of savings while a friend taught me the basics of cooking and the joy of cooking for yourself and others. I remember how proud she seemed when she said she would cook for her friends, and I wanted to feel the same. During the summer, I barely had anything to do every day, so all I did was look for food recipes online and try them out. I would spend around 4 hours cooking every day and make 2 -3 dishes even though I’m mostly eating alone. I loved taking pictures of my meal every day and sending them to my family — it made me feel that I could take care of myself and that I loved myself as much as I could in a country with very few friends.
Baking as self-regulation
Similarly, baking became my self-regulation tool since I discovered it during covid. Learning how to bake was a nurturing journey for someone always on the go like me to practice patience and balance, as well as a failure as a mandatory part of the journey.
It is about waiting for the bread to rest, stirring in a set direction with a designated pace, checking in from time to time, and figuring out the balance—not just between ingredients but also between what you want and what it needs. For example, I like my banana bread to be less sweet, so I use maple syrup and brown sugar instead of white sugar, but if there is too little sugar, moisture evaporates from the bread and results in a dry flat loaf. And sometimes, you do everything perfectly, but the result is dissatisfactory, and the only thing you can do is embrace the failure — I love that!
Section 3 | Gifts
According to research in 2019, around 70% of Americans prefer to be gifted food over another type of object. This is an exciting phenomenon because when we think about it, food is what lasts for the least amount of time, yet we crave it over other things we could own in life.
Family: My family taught me that saving food for someone is the ultimate token of love. It is a norm in my family to save the last piece for others, to bring a candy at an event home so someone else can try it, and I see it as a public declaration of love. Cuz look: I am taking this food back with me publicly, and I am not ashamed that I want to share food with someone so bad I am doing something not so ‘prideful.’ I remember my mom would always bring food and other goodies from her company to home, even if that meant she could not have it herself.
And we can’t finish this topic unless we address the fight over paying bills, especially in Asian and Arab cultures. Gosh, sometimes it becomes real war. Sometimes people pay because they are older, have higher positions, or need to pay back a favor. Other times, it’s because one has to ‘save face’ or doesn’t want to look stingy. I don’t fight over the bill unless it’s someone whose company I genuinely enjoy, and when I do pay the bill, I feel so great being able to offer something to those I care about.
P. S. I find it to be the hottest thing when someone pays for me and tells me, ‘I gotchu.’
Question: How does this relate to fighting over the bill, especially in Asian and Arab cultures?
Section 4| Acts of Service
Research: According to Ivy Kwong, a psychotherapist, and coach who specializes in AAPI mental health, the children of Asian parents are often shown love through acts of service, primarily through the making and sharing of food. It is also tied to history: back in the days, “When they saw each other on the streets they would say, ‘Hey, have you eaten yet?’ and basically, it means, ‘How are you?”
Family: “Every time my grandma cooks food for our family, she would always ask two things: One, is it delicious? Two, what is delicious?”
Public: When we eat at restaurants, we are actively buying this ‘act of service,’ and we tip our servers based on the amount of love we receive during this ‘act of service’.
Romance: I remember going with my ex to the biggest flying festival Flygfesten in Scandinavia — I had just got my covid vaccine shot and was tired af, but I took a tram, subway, and lastly, a train to get to his city, from where we drove to the middle part of Sweden. It was my first time working in the food industry, so I had no expectations, and I was just excited to travel with him for the first time. Gosh. It was such taxing work on both the mind and the body. We started preparing around 9 am, and then the people just came nonstop. It is different from doing work in school or in a corporate environment because you almost always have the choice to step out and take a water or bathroom break, but there, the unit of time is in seconds. The slower you are, the longer the line is, and when the line becomes too long, you risk losing customers. I loved him and, of course, wished the best for his business, but there are certainly times when I wished the customers would just disappear.
We got to his house at around 2 am, and his mom generously prepared nuts and fruits in the living room in advance. Then during lunch, I gasped at the rib they specially prepared just for me (I swear, it looks like the entire back of a shelf). Added together, all of us spoke 7 languages, but unfortunately, the ones I know and the ones his parents speak do not overlap. But I could feel the thoughts they put in for our first meal together and the care they were trying to give me by constantly picking up pieces of meat from the main plate and dropping it into my bowl.
Section 5| Physical
Research:
For chef Angela Dimayuga, food is part of her lovemaking, romance, and sexual identity. Intimacy is embedded in food from the jump, as we are prepared for the food to enter and go down into the very insides of our bodies. She calls herself the ‘food dom’, whose directorship and ‘try-sexual’ self translates into the kitchen and the bedroom.
Food is a powerful tool to increase intimacy. From sharing dishes when dining out to inviting someone over to cook together or pouring someone champagne mouth to mouth and spraying whip cream in sex, whatever you want, food can help you do it. The touch of food can be tender, soft, soothing, aggressive, intruding. Just like the touch of love: some kinds of sex give you goosebumps, and some others make you lose the sense of self, in all the best and worst ways. Food’s touch on our senses can be addictive, and moments of indulgence sometimes lead to habits we can’t eliminate.
Physically, our body temperature rises after we consume an ice cream because we need to xx; conversely, if we eat hotpot in the summer, it would cool down our bodies. But despite knowing this, most of us would, without doubt, choose the cooling sensation on the tip of our tongues.
On another note, it is Ramadan this month, and the discipline with food is also fascinating.
Question: For female bodies with periods, how does your relationship with food change when you’re on your period? For people who grew up in traditional Asian households, how have you received love through food instead of verbal compliments and affirmations?
References:
https://www.madisonarnholt.com/blog/67-affirmations-to-make-peace-with-food-and-your-body
https://www.headspace.com/mindfulness/mindful-cooking
https://nypost.com/2019/12/11/why-over-70-of-americans-want-to-be-gifted-food-this-holiday-season/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5344775/
https://nypost.com/2019/12/11/why-over-70-of-americans-want-to-be-gifted-food-this-holiday-season/
https://www.verywellmind.com/have-you-eaten-yet-food-is-the-ultimate-asian-love-language-5270875
About the author:
Selene is 22 years old, girl, Chinese, Japanese, alcohol-very-intolerent, ADHD…
She is a cultural sandwich with a heart as soft as firm tofu, and the three words she wants others to describe her with in life are: Genuine, Colorful, and Loving & Lovely (sorry but can’t find a word that combines both so here they serve as one word!).
