Why is Cooking a Good Challenge for your Brain?

Cooking is an intense experience for your senses.  Each message sent to your brain serves to strengthen the brain networks between your body, mind and environment:

• Every time you plan, cook and eat a meal, there is collaboration, cross-talk, and overlapping of your sensory modalities which not only challenge your brain, they create stronger links between your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations.
  
  
• Better yet, no one cooking event is ever the same as the previous so the collaboration and cross-talk are different each time you pick up a knife, pan or vegetable.   Your brain thrives on the variety and the surprise of what comes next.
  
  
• In every experience, your brain benefits from being in a continuous state of awareness since each step of each experience threads the sensations together in a different order, at different intensities, and for varying lengths of time.    
  
  
• The combination of preparation, cooking, eating, and washing up can be such an intense experience for your brain, it creates a lasting memory.
  

Your Senses Tune into Shopping, Cooking and Eating

• The mingling textures, aromas and images produced by colorful sweet fruits and tart sauces, chunky vegetables and fine herbs, course coatings and smooth pastes; soap bubbles and soft sponges.
   
• The symphony of sounds produced by: water gushing from a tap, trickling down a drain or bubbling in a pot; a knife blade peeling, chopping, slicing and crushing; whirring and grinding appliances; pots banging against each other and lids trembling; the sizzle of sauté, steaming sauces, and simmering vegetables; ice cubes crackling in a glass; the cook’s first testing slurps and sips.
  
  
• Senses are aroused by a warm stove against the frostiness of a freezer; heat produced by hot peppers countered by the cool smoothness of creamy yogurt; cold ice cream melting atop hot apple pie, gritty greasy hands plunged into warm soapy water.
  
  
• With each mouthwatering mouthful, the undertones of munching, crunching, slurping, guzzling, sipping, gulping, chomping, chewing and swallowing merge with breathing, the chiming of cutlery against china, and the human murmur of people enjoying a meal.  Add in conversation, warm candles, camaraderie, children, music and laughter to elicit more sensations and emotions that trigger even more excitement for your brain. 

Any opportunity for cooking and eating is an open-ended experience, a recipe your brain craves, and from which it thrives.  What's on your menu tonight?