It is worth considering how food relates to happiness and how eating makes us feel. Food is one or our basic foundational needs. Most of us spend quite a lot of time thinking about it, shopping for it, preparing it and eating it.
Can food make us happy?
Food relates to happiness in a very significant way. Even the thought of eating makes us feel happy and motivates us to go and find a snack!
Since food is essential for survival, it is hardly surprising that we are psychologically designed to become happier when we think about it. In past centuries, food was not as easily accessible as it is now. Hunting it down or cultivating it usually required hard physical labour, so eating a lot of it was not really a problem.
Obviously, we live in a different age now. Most of us can eat as much as we want, whenever we want, without having to exert much effort.
What is our relationship with food?
Whether we realize it or not, our relationship with food has changed. We can no longer guarantee that eating as much as we want will make us happy every time. We now have a huge range of culinary options presented to us and we need to make choices.
In our current circumstances, many of us find ourselves in situations where we look for something nice to eat when the difficulties of life make us anxious and we want to feel happier. We are not physically hungry at all. We are just trying to meet our emotional needs with food.
If we continue along this path, a destructive cycle begins. We try to make ourselves feel better by eating but the dismal result is that we gain weight and feel bad about ourselves. By focusing too much on satisfying our desires for the decadent foods we like, we undermine our ability to meet our self esteem needs.
From personal experience, I have found that my eating habits have a profound effect on how I feel. Like many people, I love bread, cakes, creamy puddings and chocolates. They make me happy in the the moment that I am eating them.
The problem is that they tend to make me very unhappy directly afterwards! I really hate feeling tired, miserable and guilty. And so I try not to overindulge in decadent treats that I know very well are not good for me.
My relationship with food was initially quite erratic until I concluded that being a healthy weight made me far happier than freely eating whatever I wanted.
How does food relate to happiness in the long term?
I eventually realised that if I wanted to stay happy, I would have to follow the path of restraint and properly manage my relationship with food.
As far as possible, I try to focus on finding happiness in the discipline of making healthy food choices that will be good for me. The words of Paul 1 Corinthians are really applicable in this context.
“I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should.” 1 Corinthians 9:27
In my view, building a disciplined lifestyle that increases my sense of wellbeing in the long term is far better than focusing on instant gratification.
Since food relates to happiness in such an intrinsic way, I would say it is important to use it to improve our health rather than seeing it as a source of emotional comfort. Building beneficial eating habits increases our resilience and ability to face the difficulties of life. Our overall sense of wellbeing is enhanced and we are in a better position to consistently maintain our feelings of contentment, regardless of the challenges we face.