Learning to cook was an important step in ending my food battle. And then post-Truce with Food, I found myself less interested in food, cooking included.

Cooking became “assembling”. We still ate most of our meals at home; it just became some version of frozen vegetable, rice and chicken, give or take some garlic powder. Meh but manageable.

Then we became new, sleep-deprived parents and COVID hit. Cooking was important but even less of a priority. I knew when I did have the time and energy, I enjoyed cooking if it was simple and delicious. How could I get back to a place where cooking was sustainable, simple and enjoyable?

I asked Meghan Telpner, founder of the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, to help sort out the jumble of feelings many of us feel towards cooking. Sometimes cooking feels like a chore. And sometimes it fills our soul. How can we make cooking and the food we eat more satisfying?

In this episode, Meghan shares:

1. Easy ways to incorporate the flavors and foods that reduce and eliminate cravings for super sugary and salty foods.

2. How the more sugar or salt we eat, the more we want (and how this interferes with feeling satiated from lesser amounts of sugar and salt).

3. An experiment to really get what sugar or salt is doing to your taste buds and body.

4. Why the act of cooking is so fulfilling to our bodies and how knowing this makes me more excited to cook more.

5. Easy ways to incorporate texture and smells, which influence our food satisfaction.