Mindful Eating

(All Ages)

Choose a snack or small item of food for this practice, like a nut or berry or dried fruit. Encourage your student to focus the entire time on the whole experience of exploring this food, while narrating for them using the script below. You may need to give examples so that younger children understand the vocabulary of things like texture. Small fruits or nuts are always good healthy choices for this exercise.

• Let's try a mindful eating practice together! Let's pretend we've never seen this item before and we're trying to decide if it is edible! We won't be naming this item as a food, but rather we will be referring to it as an "object" or "mystery item"' even though we know what it is.
• Let's explore this object with all of our senses one at a time, and name a couple of short descriptions of what we are experiencing with each sense as we go along.
• Noticing any changes in your body as we go through each step.
• First let's notice what we see with our eyes as we look at our mystery object as it rests in our hand or on a napkin, in a cup, etc. What color, shape, size, any other visible details do we notice?
• Then lightly touching the object between two fingers, what texture do we notice? Is it rough or smooth? Moist or dry? Sticky or not?
• Now, noticing any smell. Maybe we can notice sweet or sour, earthy or musty?
• Finally, let's put the 'object' in our mouths, but let's not chew yet. What sensations do we notice in the mouth? Do we feel an urge to chew and swallow? Is the mouth salivating? How does it feel to have this object in the mouth?
• And as a last step, tasting the food by biting down on the object just once. Notice any change in flavor or texture.
• Now chewing and swallowing slowly.

-Did you notice any changes in your body as we went through each step?
-Hunger, salivating, tummy growls, lack of hunger or fullness
-What did you notice about the food? Did it taste different than other times you've eaten the same food?
-How did it feel to slow down and eat this food mindfully?