In a Pottery Barn yesterday, I noticed some air “fresheners” with names like Tupelo Honey, Paper White, Pomegranate, and Mandarin. Like an incense stick or scent candle, they add a pleasant smell to the air. The display included testers, similar to perfume testers, that produce a fine spray. I tried a few. They were an easy way to alter the flavor of one’s food, I realized. I asked a clerk, “Can these be sprayed on food?” He tried to find the ingredients but couldn’t. “Is this the strangest question you’ve been asked today?” I asked. “No one has ever asked me this,” he said.
If you carried in your purse a few small sleek canisters of “food perfumes,” you could easily make any food at any meal less recognizable and thus less fattening. Randomly using two or three perfumes per meal might provide enough diversity to last a lifetime. The SLD forum term for this is crazy-spicing. At least one person has lost a great deal of weight (80 pounds?) doing nothing else. You can still eat all your favorite foods; depending on the dose of food perfume, they will still taste good (if not out-of-this-world delicious). In this post, Peter Merel describes his discovery that slightly-altered favorite foods no longer trigger binges.
a little slice of mud cake … I know if I start I’m going to be inhaling that stuff big time. No question. Serious ditto for me.
Do you think lemon juice can cut that?
Only one way to find out. Into the microwave and then a squeeze of lemon juice on top. I’ll admit the lemon juice didn’t help a chocolate cake. But it wasn’t bad either. I mean I’d have it again like that if this actually worked.
This Actually Worked!
I have also posted many times about the benefits of flaxseed oil, which I believe derives from its high omega-3 content. The benefits are so large, fast, and repeatable I suspect almost everyone is suffering from omega-3 deficiency. The Shangri-La Diet of the future, I believe, will have three main parts:
1. Some sort of oil for weight loss and other benefits, including better sleep, better skin, and omega-3s. If it has flavor, you close your nose while you ingest it.
2. Elegant little spray cannisters of food perfumes to vary the flavor of your food.
3. (For hot weather) Ice-cold fructose water. I think it’s a viable product, like ice tea.
Perfumes have petrochemicals, that’s crazy to spray them on food. You can use food grade essential oils though.
Seth, actually spraying the perfumes on the food would be unwieldy and people are unlikely to do it while people are watching. Wouldn’t it make more sense to carry a set of short-life liquid aromas (food “perfumes,” if you will) that you could dab in each nostril before a meal?
I think you may not need to spray the food. If you rub the perfume under your nose you will smell it throughout the meal.
The notion of dabbing a few perfumes in each nostril before a meal is fascinating. However, you might get sensory adaptation — after a minute or two there would no more effect. While eating the smell is on and off so there is less adaptation.
I successfully lost 60 pounds some years ago. One of my techniques when eating out was to divide all the food on my plate in half, then sprinkle salt and/or sugar packets liberally on one of the halves – thereby rendering it inedible.
Very interesting! 1. Have you kept off the 60 pounds? 2. If so what were you other techniques?
It’s fairly well known that by holding one’s nose, one can greatly reduce the perception of flavor in food, drink, etc.
This effect is not just (total taste perception) – (intake of aroma from food). For instance, if one were to contrive an apparatus that doesn’t stuff up one’s nose, but instead allows one to breathe only filtered air through the nostrils, the reduction in perceived flavor would be minimal.
I’m curious whether people who don’t really mind holding their nose (or perhaps, using noseplugs) while consuming food or drink, might thus be able to satisfice on the shangri la diet under non-ideal circumstances (where even sugar water in a teacup is difficult to get)…
Many people have applied the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet by holding their nose closed while eating. It’s called “nose-clipping”.