Intensity and depth, complexity and focus, all deepen an experience and make you feel more alive. We live by contrasts. Lack of something makes you aware of its opposite, and that provides an opportunity to notice preferences.

My recent fall cleanse, while not calorie restrictive, was vegan without flour products, nightshade and cruciferous vegetables, and involved lots of drinking, although not that kind. Instead, lots of apple cider vinegar water, a green smoothie for breakfast, and herbal tea. To be clear, this post is not about the obvious benefits of a cleanse.

Now that I have slowly reintroduced food groups I have really enjoyed chewing again, biting onto something hard or crusty and feeling resistance, sinking my teeth into something dense and meaty, and hearing crunching inside my head while I eat. It’s been a renewed realization of how complex the pleasures of eating are when your food stimulates all your senses with texture, smell, sight, and even sound.

The long-ago Volkswagen campaign about Fahrvergnügen was about the pleasures and fun of driving, which are reduced in an electric car and absent in a self-driving car, a gradual flattening of the driving experience. I like to experience Essvergnügen, a heightened and complex interaction with my food and senses. All that soft vegetably food of the cleanse, the smoothies and bland herbal teas, were more baby than adult food, and flattened and diminished the joys of eating. I couldn’t wait to get back to my crunchy avocado toast for breakfast and the rest of my omnivorous diet with all of its variety of textures and tastes.

Here a previous post on food texture.