All posts tagged: food and the senses

The Agony and the Ecstasy—of Eating

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While we often think of eating as a supremely pleasurable experience, there are also times when eating brings pain, which can be wholly unwelcome or fully enjoyed. Rozin defines pain as “a negative experienced state that we avoid and that we try to reduce or eliminate” (1999: 5). And yet, there are numerous instances in which we do not avoid, reduce, or eliminate painful eating experiences. From late night, drive-through tacos that leave one’s stomach a bit unsettled to that ready-to-burst feeling that follows overeating at Thanksgiving dinner, we often fail to prevent moderately painful gastric distress. Pain can also find us by accident, as we cry out when a momentary mishap of the teeth causes us to bite down on our inner cheek or when we burn our tongues on a hot soup that we are too eager to try. Specific foods, however, bring a pain that at least some of us welcome and seek on purpose. Spicy foods set our tongues and lips on fire. Pickled foods render the inside of our mouths …

Thoughts on Ph.D. Programs, the Arduous Task of Moving, and Food & the Senses

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A seemingly-unimaginable-totally-wonderful-slightly-bewildering thing has happened to me—I’ve been offered admission to not one dream Ph.D. program, but several. While I’ll be making endless lists of pros and cons until April 15, one fact remains certain: my husband and I will indeed be moving again this summer, which brings up bitter-sweet memories. On a hot and humid morning in July 2011, my husband and I moved everything we owned from a shipment container into a U-Haul truck and then into our new apartment in Brookline. After hours of traipsing up and down the stairs with arms full of far-too-heavy boxes, we returned the U-Haul truck to its lot. Without a car, we were about to begin the mile walk back to our new home, when we spotted a Dunkin’ Donuts across the street. Having never eaten there before and only newly aware of its ubiquity across New England (this was months before I first began my research on Dunkin’ Donuts coffee culture), we were beckoned forward, strangely drawn to the strawberry-vanilla Coolatta we had seen advertised on television and …