Article Satisfying Meals: Flavour, Texture, Nutrition & Good Company
Why the Experience and Pleasure of Eating is the Secret to Truly Satisfying Healthy Meals
October 02, 2024
Food plays an enormous role in our day-to-day lives, but its contribution to our well-being is not just physical. Truly satisfying meals are far more than a delivery mechanism for nutrition—simple, healthy foods have the power to bring pleasure and satisfy the sensory and social needs that help you thrive.
Keep reading to explore how weaving physical satisfaction, sensory satisfaction, and emotional satisfaction into your menu can help you create food experiences that nourish your body, mind, and spirit.
Nutrition:
Physical Satisfaction
Whether you wing it or count each one, physical satisfaction is more than the sum of the calories in a meal.
Nutrition research shows that the macronutrient composition—how much protein, carbohydrate and fat there is in a food—plays an important role in helping you feel full at the end of a meal (satiation) and staying satisfied until your next one (satiety).1
Here’s how each macronutrient stands in order of its satisfaction superpowers:
Carbohydrates
Healthy whole food carbohydrates are fuel for full, active lives—from your gut to your muscles to your brain, your body needs them to thrive.
Protein
While it’s rare to be protein deficient in North America, there’s a reason protein is so popular—it’s the most effective macronutrient at making you feel full.2 Reach for plant-based proteins like beans, legumes and lentils, nuts and seeds to feel satisfied fast!
Healthy Fats
Nuts and seeds add satisfying fibre and protein to the party, but they’re also sources of healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats, which some studies suggest may contribute to greater satiety, especially paired with fibre.6
But that’s not the only reason to seek them out—a little healthy fat can add a lot of satisfaction by adding richness, creaminess, and enjoyable mouthfeel to meals.
Planning your menu so it includes plant-based protein, complex carbs, and a splash of healthy fat is an excellent start for satisfying meals! But don’t stop there—keep reading to learn more satisfaction secrets!
A Big Idea:
The Experiential Pleasure of Food (EFP)
EFP describes the idea that food experiences are central to well-being—where the entire process of a meal matters, from anticipating the menu to gathering ingredients, from preparing to eating the food you make, all the way to remembering the experience.7
Without dismissing the value of nutrition, using food just for physical satisfaction alone is not enough.
But rather than the hedonistic pleasure of satisfying short-term cravings without considering nutrition at all, the Experiential Pleasure of Food approach encourages mindful savouring.
Framing food pleasure as a path to health and well-being, Mindful savouring
means being present and appreciating the qualities of each bite—and everything that went into it.7
It considers:
Sensory
Satisfaction
Relishing the flavour, taste, texture, and aroma of food
Social
Satisfaction
Delighting in shared food as a means to connect with others and participate in culture
Storytelling
Satisfaction
Creating meaning and memory through family, past, and cultural food experiences
This approach values food as a means of personal and creative expression (food as art and craft).
It celebrates food as an expression of care for the people you love (including yourself).
And it treasures food as an expression of culture and family traditions (and the stories and nostalgia that goes with them).
Flavour, Texture, Aroma, Visual Appeal:
Sensory Satisfaction
Meals with more than one note invite your senses to play! Fun or unexpected contrasts or harmonious complements between flavours, textures, colours and aromas offer an opportunity to find mindfulness—and satisfaction—in every mouthful.
Flavour
On their own, the five tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami* (savoury) don’t have much to say besides “Too much!” But learning how they go together is key to finding the art in food.
*New to umami?
If there were only four tastes on your elementary school science test, umami is the fifth—it’s what makes miso, soy sauce, mushrooms, tomato, olives, and seaweed savoury.8
Check out the bonus chart of tips for pairing all five tastes to play with contrast, build balance, and use flavour to create sensory satisfaction that makes meals taste memorable in the appendix at the end of this article.
Texture
Contrasts of texture build sensory interest and make each bite an adventure!
In solid foods, texture includes crunchy and crispy, chewy and tender, hard and soft, smooth and rough, or big and little pieces.
Texture influences sensory satisfaction as well as physical satisfaction—eating solid, richly textured food helps you feel fuller, less hungry, and more satisfied.
Why? Even with the same calories and nutrition, the sensory stimulation from complex textures helps you feel satiation faster.9
That’s reason to make your meals with a variety of shapes, sizes, and textures.
(And a vote for a tomato soup and grilled cheese combo if you ask us!)
Aroma
Taste is what you can sense with your tongue, but flavour is what you get when you combine your sense of taste with your sense of smell.
Food aromas draw you in and whet your appetite. Taste makes a meal worth eating. And the combination of aroma and taste in flavourful food is directly connected to the feeling of satiation you get from the meal.10
The more flavourful the meal, the more sensory satisfaction you get, the less food you need to eat before you feel full.
Fragrant, aromatic additions like herbs, spices, and zests add more than flavour to meals. They add personality and help create a mood with food.
Check out the chart of aromatic ingredients you can use to add appetizing flavours to meals—without needing a recipe—in the appendix at end of this article.
Visual Appeal
Any great cook will tell you “We eat with our eyes” so sensory satisfaction also includes how foods look before you bite.
Colourful, attractive foods influence our expectation of flavour and build anticipation of sweet or intense tastes to come.
Good Company:
Emotional Satisfaction
Good nutrition and good flavour are essential elements of healthy, satisfying meals. But who you eat with matters, too.
Food is a form of expression and a means to connect with something larger than yourself. Emotionally satisfying meals can be about:
Caring
We nourish and nurture family and loved ones with food selected, made, and served with care
Community
We bond with others through shared food, and find pleasure in the social experience of eating and cooking together
Culture
We find cultural connection and common ground through the food traditions of parents, generations past, and far-flung family—and of the places we’ve been
Food is central to the stories of our lives. And the relationship between food, mood, and memory can be profound.
Memories of our most emotionally satisfying meals are anchored in time and place. We remember the setting and atmosphere of meals shared for special occasions, celebrations, and milestones.
A single whiff of a food aroma can transport us back to tables past, what we ate and who we ate with, and how we felt in that moment.
From nostalgia to novelty to nutrition, practicing mindful savouring allows us to experience the pleasure of healthy eating and find physical, sensory, and emotional satisfaction in meals that feed every part of us.
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Appendix:
Bonus Content to Help You Create Sensory Satisfaction Without a Recipe
Try the ideas in these charts out in our Healthy Mix-and-Match Sprouted Bread Stuffing recipe!
Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, and Umami: Tips for Pairing all Five Tastes
| Sweet | Sour | Salty | Bitter | Umami | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sweet | Tip: Let the natural sweetness of fruit shine without adding more sugar—try vanilla, mint, cinnamon, or chili with your favourite fruits! | Add a splash of sour! Lift sweetness with lemon juice or brighten it up with another acid, like vinegar—sweet and sour are a cross-cultural combo! | Add a pinch of salt! Salt intensifies sweetness—that’s why salted caramel, or a sprinkle of salt on your favourite fudgy brownie works. | Add a bitter bass note! Tone down sweetness in stuffing with dark leafy greens, balance fruit with cacao or dark chocolate. | Add a hint of savoury! Pair mushrooms with sweet potatoes or try miso and maple together in a sauce or dressing. |
| Sour | Add sweet to soften sour’s sting! Balance a vinaigrette with a drizzle of maple syrup or agave. | Tip: Tame a sour dish with a little fat—think like the oil in a vinaigrette dressing or any creamy lemon dessert. | Add a hint of salt! Salt and vinegar is a timeless combo for a reason. | Add bitter with sweet to tame sour! Classic marmalade combines all three. | Add sophistication with umami! Citrus and soy pair perfectly in ponzu and other sauces. |
| Salty | Add sweet to mellow salt! Peanut butter and jam is flavour layering at its finest. | Add sour to neutralize saltiness! A squeeze of citrus won’t reduce sodium in a too salty dish but can fix a flavour faux pas. | Tip: Salt to taste—it’s always easier to add salt than take it away! Start with a light hand, but don’t skip the seasoning (unless you’re on a low-sodium diet!) | Add bitter to help dilute an over-salted dish! Dark leafy greens and extra liquid can save a salty soup. | Add umami! Umami ingredients may help you use less salt and fat in your meal!8 |
| Bitter | Add sweet to buffer bitter! Dark chocolate works because a little sugar tames the bitterness of cacao alone. | Add sour to soften bitterness! Squeeze some lemon on dark leafy greens like kale or splash some vinegar in the pan to complete collard greens. | Add a sprinkle of salt! Make greens like broccoli and spinach more kid-friendly with a tiny bit of salt. | Tip: Add a little fat to fix bitter. Plant-based butter or creamy coconut can balance bitterness in dishes from savoury mains to desserts. | Add umami for a better bitter bite! Miso or soy dressings make spinach sing, and nutritional yeast mellows brussels sprouts with plant-based cheesiness. |
| Umami | Add sweetness to help savoury stand out! A pinch of sugar can bring out the umami in tomato sauce. | Add some acid to make umami sparkle! Take the heaviness out of a too-savoury dish with a splash of vinegar. | Add a pinch of salt to intensify umami! Classic umami foods from cooked tomatoes to soy sauce wouldn’t be winners without it! | Add bitterness to bring umami dishes to life! Dark leafy greens are the perfect complement to mushrooms or tomato sauce. | Tip: Build flavour with layers of umami. Classic umami combos include mushrooms+ olives+ tomatoes, or soy+ miso+ mushrooms +kelp. |
| Essential Aromatics | Alliums: | Aromatic Veggies: | ||
| • Onions | • Carrots | |||
| • Garlic | • Celery | |||
| • Shallots | • Bell peppers | |||
| • Green onion | ||||
| • Leeks | ||||
| Warming Spices | Comforting: | Smoky: | Spicy: | |
| • Cinnamon | • Paprika | • Black pepper | ||
| • Nutmeg | • Smoked chili | • Ginger | ||
| • Cardamom | • Cayenne | |||
| Uplifting Herbs and Zests | Refreshing: | Zesty: | Woody: | Floral: |
| • Mint | • Lemon zest | • Rosemary | • Lavender | |
| • Basil | • Orange zest | • Sage | • Saffron | |
| • Parsley | • Lime zest | • Thyme | • Rose | |
| • Tarragon | • Vanilla |
