DIY Healthy Food More Likable Says New Research

Everybody wants to have a healthy relationship with food. But it’s not so easy. Healthy food choices often seem impossible caught, as we are, in a tsunami of donuts, a blizzard of pizza rolls. Evolution just did not prepare us for constant access to so much salt, sugar and fat. So, grabbing a handful of celery and carrot sticks when that bag of Spicy Sweet Chili Flavored Doritos is literally screaming for your attention can feel pretty much impossible.

But if you try to get as much enjoyment as possible from the calories consumed, what I’ve called “culinary mindfulness,” you just may find healthy eating a bit easier. After all, satisfaction is what we seek. You can try things like slowing down to savor what you eat, choosing foods (like local, seasonal produce) that taste better, eating with other people rather than staring at a screen and even eating food that has a story meaningful to you.

Another way to increase enjoyment is spending some precious and oh so limited time actually preparing what you eat. Yes, I mean what is commonly called “cooking.” Done right—not too boring, not too challenging—you get to have some fun and, as an elegant new study showed, there is also a good chance of increasing how much you like what you eat.

The study in the journal Health Psychology by Simone Dohle, Sina Rall, and Michael Siegrist was tilted “Does Self-Prepared Food Taste Better? Effects of Food Preparation on Liking.” It demonstrated that when participants prepared their own healthy milkshake (raspberry and low-calorie) they liked it more than when they drank the identical shake prepared by someone else. In contrast, participants who drank an unhealthy milkshake (chocolate and high-calorie) tended to like the self-preparation less than the other-made.

Here’s how they did it. One hundred and twenty women “tasted food that was either self-prepared or other-prepared, and that either contained markedly healthy or unhealthy ingredients.” The prep was not hard, but it was realistic. Participants were given a recipe and access to all the necessary ingredients and kitchen utensils (scale, blender, measuring cup). Or, they were just given a shake, like at a fast food counter.

Their results showed that DIY healthy food really is significantly more likable than the same food prepared by someone else. It means you just might want to walk past those pre-cut carrot and celery sticks (or those little bags of relatively tasteless carrot nubs) to buy actual carrots and celery. Cut them up yourself and you just may like the sticks more, maybe enough to tilt the balance away from that seductive bag of Doritos.

Of course, lots of questions remain: How difficult does the DIY project need to be and at what point does it become too difficult? Is there a familiarity effect so that the second DIY milkshake just does not taste as good? How social should it be? And what about men, children and teens? Plus lots of other questions.

But if this plays out in positive ways the public health implications are staggering. So let’s keep an eye on this research. Who knows, maybe the secret of getting kids in schools to eat healthier foods is to make the school kitchen a classroom where students prep their own healthy food instead of having it doled out on compartmentalized trays.

source : forbes.com

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