The kitchen can become a refuge from stress and anxiety when we focus on the benefits of making meals from scratch. For instance: mindfulness, creativity, and health-supporting choices.
Creativity in the Kitchen
As the fall days grow crisp, it’s time to turn to the kitchen for an opportunity to stimulate your senses with fragrant aromas, rich tastes, and visual delights.
Cooking lets you focus on the present, flex your creativity, and nurture the people you care about. If you enlist others to help chop and stir, it can also be a way to bond with your household or socialize with friends.
Avid cooks have long recognized the therapeutic power of kitchen time. That’s true for Laura, 34, of California, a Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer and chef. The wife and mother of two says she turns to the kitchen to help to ward off seasonal stress or mood dips.
“There’s nothing I love more than being in my kitchen in the fall,” says Laura. “There is that chill in the air. It feels like time to cuddle up and make delicious food for the people I love.”
And if fall brings on an urge to hibernate or just a general slowing down, cooking is a good countermeasure to deploy. It fits into an approach that mental health experts call “behavioral activation.”
Simply put, goal-oriented behavior triggers a momentum that builds on itself. You’re reinforcing a pattern that helps to combat procrastination and passivity. And if the activity is personally rewarding or offers a sense of pleasure—such as cooking a delicious stew or curating an artful salad—it enhances your overall well-being.
According to Statista.com, which compiles statistical information from around the world, 37 percent of Americans described themselves as “passionate about food and cooking” in a 2014 survey. That would include Jim of New York.
What does he love most about cooking? “The end product,” Jim says, only half-joking.
Cooking is a major recreational activity for Jim and his wife, Kathy. On busy weeknights, they unwind together and discuss the day’s events while preparing dinner. And cooking is generally the focus of their weekends, as well.
Someone else might choose to go out to a movie, Jim says, tossing out a random example. Instead, “we stay home and make something. We enjoy it.”
Scientific proof of cooking’s feel-good power is hard to come by. But in one study published in the British Journal of Occupational Therapy, British researchers found that baking classes (cooking’s close cousin) boosted confidence, increased concentration, and provided a sense of achievement.
Admittedly, the rush to get some sort of dinner on the table can be stress-inducing for those who consider cooking another chore, on par with ironing shirts or shoveling snow. Yet there’s actually such a thing as “culinary therapy” in the mental health field.
Sierra, an Arizona-based treatment center that includes cooking and related activities in its program, lists these benefits: Stress relief. Relief from boredom. Improved memory, attention and focus. Increased sensory awareness (which can be a form of mindfulness, by the way). Enhanced ability to plan and organize. And not least, a sense of accomplishment that boosts self-esteem.
Laura certainly gets a shot of self-worth on the job, even though it’s “just” institutional cooking.
“The guys in the Coast Guard love my food so much that they have been known to call me Petty Officer Martha Stewart,” she brags.
Her favorite fall dish to prepare—at work and at home—is butternut squash soup made with pureed onions, chicken base, and a little cream cheese. She says the sailors “call it liquid gold. … I’ve been known to take down entire duty sections because they’re all asleep, their bellies are so full.”
Jennifer welcomes the arrival of Brussels sprouts, spaghetti squash, and other seasonal produce: “Fall ingredients are the best,” says the Missouri resident.
A longtime vegetarian who has transitioned to vegan, Jennifer “had to get creative in the kitchen” when she switched from a meat-based diet. Now, cooking is an act that nourishes her spirit as much as her body.
“Cooking in the way that I cook—vegan—improves my overall sense of self because I know that I am doing all I can to protect animals and the environment,” says Jennifer, who blogs about the vegan lifestyle at The Stingy Sprout. “So not only do I enjoy the creativity and the eating, I also feel that I’m caring for my soul.”
Here are a few other reasons to crack open a cookbook, line up your pots and pans, and throw together a fall feast.
A Means to Mindfulness
Any hands-on activity can be a good antidote to brain overload, bringing your focus back to something physical and concrete. With the proper intention, meal preparation can become a truly meditative experience. And as we all know, mindfulness helps lower stress and calm the mind.
Amanda Bohnenstiehl, LPC, a dialectical behavior therapist and clinical supervisor based in St. Louis, encourages her clients to practice mindfulness in the kitchen. As an example, she describes preparing orange sections for a snack or a salad recipe:
“Start by taking note of its skin—the color, the touch, the smell,” she says. “Then, as you peel and section the fruit, notice the moment-to-moment sensations, such as the spray of juice when you break through the peel, how it sounds when you tear the skin. Finally, put one of the peeled sections into your mouth, and taste the juiciness and flavor.”
When you’re focusing on the moment this way, you’re not ruminating over past slights or worrying about future problems, Bohnenstiehl says. And she points out that practicing mindfulness with a calm, safe moment like making your lunch lays a framework for using mindfulness at times that are more emotionally fraught.
Stuart Slavin, MD, MEd, uses cooking (with ingredients grown in his own garden) as a way to detox from daily pressures.
“I am a huge proponent of informal mindfulness,” says Slavin. “I look for opportunities to practice mindfulness in brief, little ways—and cooking and eating are excellent examples.”
In his professional life as associate dean for curriculum at St. Louis University Medical School, Slavin is an ardent advocate for improving the mental health of medical students and teaching them skills to manage stress.
In his personal life, he welcomes the opportunity to “slow down his brain” by focusing on each of his five senses while cooking—the smell of the food, the sound of the knife hitting the cutting board, the sight of a batch of red tomatoes or orange winter squash, the touch of cold water while rinsing fresh produce. And, of course, the best part is the taste.
“It’s a way to slow down and savor without getting distracted by excess,” he explains.
Input Control
In doctor mode, Slavin points out that cooking meals from scratch allows you more control over your physical health. It’s easier to keep sodium, fat and sugar at a minimum when you prepare food for yourself. Plus, if you choose menus that are heavy on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and lean protein, you will significantly lower your risk for a range of chronic diseases.
Slavin lists numerous benefits of a healthy diet, such as reducing inflammation, improving digestion, improving heart health, preventing cancer, helping you maintain a healthy weight, and giving you more energy.
There’s growing evidence that a high-quality diet plays a major role in keeping your brain healthy, too—which translates into sharper thinking, better memory, and more resilience in the face of life’s stresses.
Research has clearly established a link between brain health and a number of nutrients, including vitamin E, omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, iron, zinc, magnesium, and the various amino acids.
To make sure that your brain is getting enough of these vital nutrients, “it helps to know exactly what you’re feeding it,” Slavin says.
There are various lists of so-called superfoods, deemed high in antioxidants that protect the brain from cellular wear and tear. You’ll typically see salmon, sardines, blueberries, steel-cut oats, and leafy greens like kale and spinach. The actual list of healthful foods is exponentially larger—pretty much anything that grows in the ground or on a tree is a good bet.
Slavin is a fan of eating foods in the most natural state, since overcooking often breaks down important nutrients.
“Sometimes the simplest recipes are best,” he says. “Like a fresh garden tomato with fresh mozzarella on whole grain bread. Good ingredients, prepared simply and well.”
Bonding over Breaking Bread
Slavin offers one more argument in support of cooking from scratch: deeper connections with the people who chop and stir alongside you.
“Prepping (ingredients) with someone you care about, quietly together, can be very meaningful,” he reflects.
Jim and his wife entertain frequently in their Pendleton home. They love to share the fruits of their kitchen labors with friends and family—but they share the labor as well, involving their guests in some of the prep work.
They even have cooking buddies—another guy and his wife who join in their passion for culinary creation.
“We really enjoy cooking with others when they come over, just having good friend bonding,” Jim says. “Talking with a friend, enjoying a good meal—if it comes out right—to us, that’s a really great evening.”
Jim says he’s been cooking dinner with his wife for nearly all of their 26 years of marriage. Their vacation plans feature gastronomic meccas like the Napa Valley in California. When they come across an especially good dish while dining out, they use their ingenuity to try to re-create it at home.
“Sometimes the chefs are good about giving you the recipe. Other times it’s just trying to figure out what’s in it and redo it,” he explains.
The Jims are also regulars at the local farmers market. Sometimes they’re looking for specific ingredients to make one of the recipes in their abundant cookbook collection. Sometimes they let the week’s fresh offerings inspire them.
Laura, the Coast Guard cook, can relate. While she devotes a lot of her smartphone data plan to recipe searches, she’s also been known to “go rogue” and cook without rules.
“I just work with what I have on hand sometimes. … I love that I am using the creative side of my brain—that I’m allowed to make art—and at the end, I get to eat it and share it!”
Printed as “Cooking for Comfort,” Fall 2016
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