Your Food is your Mood

Being part of a large family, I definitely felt a sense of tradition, camaraderie and family bonding during special occasions, and none were more special than Christmas Eve. Since my mother belonged to a large family of nine, there were a bunch of families in our little “clan” each with their own traditions, all originating from the early traditions my grandmother had set. These are of a few of my most memorable experiences.

Memories are something that each person has, as we learned from our psychology class, Memory refers to the processes that are used to acquire, store, retain and later retrieve information. As we know, There are three major processes involved in memory: encoding, storage and retrieval. Memories from the past can bring certain emotions back to us that make us feel either happy or sad and can bring forth almost any emotion thinkable.

As a child, I remember being excited, all in anticipation for our Christmas Eve celebration. For as long as I can remember, my mother and the hired help would work throughout the whole afternoon of December 24th, cooking, roasting, and running over to the nearest grocery store in search of a missing ingredient, the beads of sweat trickling down their forehead, clearly showing their exhaustion. I never heard a single complaint as I knew that Christmas Eve was a very special occasion for us. When it all ended, my mother would come out of the kitchen, dress up, and come down looking as if she hadn’t been cooking all day.  When I grew older, more of the same traditions remained, however, as I showed my interest in the culinary field, I became on of the people responsible for preparing the food. Mashing the garlic, making meatballs, and tasting the final product were always a fun thing to do as a child. Our feasts were always too much for us to even consume. There were pastas, cheeses, meats, fruits and ham. There was always ham. Never have I had a Christmas Eve dinner where we didn’t have ham. I along with my siblings, parents and close family friends would enjoy the whole night eating till the wee hours of the morning, telling stories, and holding a karaoke session all before opening our Christmas presents.

As I said, memories from happy times have a way of inviting heartwarming feelings and make you look to the past for good times and to look forward to the future in order to get excited at what’s to come. On another note, food has a very important role in our everyday lives. While some consider food as nourishment and sustenance to keep alive, food also plays an important part in helping invoke memories. While most of us realize the food we eat has a direct correlation to our physical health, many don’t consider the connection between food and our emotional state. Often we hear the phrase, “you are what you eat” but it may be just as accurate to say, “your food is your mood” as research over the years has shown what we eat can affect our mood, both positively and negatively. I remember a scene in Pixar’s Ratatouille, where it was extremely difficult to please the extremely critical critic  excuse the redundancy Anton Ego, but after they served him ratatouille, what most consider as a peasant’s dish and not worthy of a high class restaurant, the chef in the movie received much praise because the critic was taken back to his childhood when his mother would serve him a big bowl of it to make him feel better. That is why most people have foods listed as their “comfort food” I personally love red spaghetti with little circle hotdogs and brunoised carrots and while considered weird to some, I enjoy eating it with my hands. I dunno, I guess because when I was a child that was one of the things I enjoyed eating the most and since I didn’t know how to use a fork back then, i had to resort to using my hands. So, when you’re feeling sad and depressed, find some friends or family and grab a bite of whatever makes you feel happy, it may be a big bowl of chocolate ice cream or a hot steaming plate of haggis. Hey, I don’t judge, as long as it makes YOU happy.

Buddies, Beer & Bacon. The three most important things in life, XOXO.

(c)Ezra Sumbillo

Music and Lyrics

“There is something about music that evolves over time, as do emotions. When we hear the song we re-live the emotional sequence that happened when we first heard it,” says Professor John Sloboda of Keele University and author of Music and Emotion, “that’s why music is more powerful than, for example, smell or painting, it draws you into a sequence of re-lived experience.”

 

Music is one of the most amazing things that exist, even for those hearing impaired, the one thing they wish to hear besides the sound of their mother’s voice is music. It is one of the things that soothe and calm the ears bringing together a plethora of emotions that may may stem from past memories. Surely it comes as a surprise to no one that songs can evoke powerful memories. Personally, there are literally hundreds of songs that take me back to past memories or even whole fragments of my life, whether it may be a sad or happy memory. For some reason, Paramore’s 2008 recording of “That’s What You Get” always reminds me of my first years in a new high school and how terrifying it was but also how fun it was to meet new people and step out of my comfort zone. I guess that’s why I enjoy singing. Music can touch people in certain places where normal words can’t. Have you ever been in a place in your life where all you listened to was sappy, emotional love songs? Yeah, that’s one of the coping mechanisms people usually turn to. In many of those reality TV competitions where the focal point is an aspiring singer, there is more often than not a line that goes, “Music was there for me when no one else was.” 

Although that may sound cheesy and annoying to most of you, it is in fact, one of the truest statements that anyone in the world can relate to. Have you ever listened to the music in horror movies? What about the music in inspirational or Disney movies? What kind of music do you listen to when your sad? What kind of music do you listen to when you’re happy?  What do all these have in common? They all invoke emotion. EMOTIONS stemming from MEMORIES. In psychology class, we talked about how memories are formed. It may be that some of these memories are directly related to music that we listened to at that certain period in time or music that we did in fact turn to. I have had first hand experience with having music change my mind set and having music make me feel better about things. On another note, singers, whether professional or amateur, are there doing what they do because of simply that. They wanna make people hear their music, not just on an outer level or because it sounds pretty. The emotions behind these songs are what they are trying to convey on the listeners. I sing in events, school, church, technically anywhere where there’s a microphone and a band. I always make sure however, that the song I’m choosing has some emotional substance and words that may mean something because you never know when a person may need it the most. Basically whenever I or anyone should hear music, as the great Christina Aguilera said,

“I get butterflies, I hear lullabies, it’s hard to explain

Like the scent of a rose or the sound of the rain

It’s too precious and too wonderful to give it a name.”

That’s what music is.

 

(c) Ezra Sumbillo

The Hunger Games: Physical or Mind games?

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Most recently, I have become extremely fascinated and transfixed on a new book series, The Hunger Games. For most people, this could have been just any other book that they read, felt some emotion, and put down. I, however, saw the book as something extremely moving and became slightly obsessed with the idea of the hunger games as an event itself in the fictitious country of Panem in the story, but also in the message underlined in the story itself.

For those unfamiliar with the story, the Hunger Games (a novel written by Suzanne Collins) follows the main character, Katniss Everdeen, as she participates in a grueling contest, the Hunger Games. These games take place in a fictitious nation, Panem which consists of the wealthy Capitol and 12 poorer districts. As punishment for a rebellion against the Capitol in the past, from each district one boy and one girl are selected by annual lottery (Reaping) to participate in the Hunger Games. In these Games, the participants (tributes) must fight each other to death in an outdoor arena controlled by the Capitol, until one survivor remains. Much like the Olympics, each district roots for their tribute to win the whole thing in order to bring glory to their district.

As a psychology student however, I did notice some underlying themes in this book that directly related to things we learned in Psychology. For one, The Hunger Games is so interesting because it’s about psychological oppression. The Capitol uses many methods of psychological oppression, not just physical oppression. Being in the state of power, the officials from the capitol have used their power to their advantage to oppress its citizens.

The Hunger Games themselves are very much about human psychology. Not only does it numb the citizens of Panem to violence, but it makes people feel guilty about the dead children. The Districts are sending these children as sacrifices to save their own skins, that’s a real burden on one’s conscience. Guilty minds are less likely to rebel since they are blaming themselves rather than the Capitol. Moreover, the Hunger Games sets up a system where the Districts are opponents. No matter what, the fact is that someone in other Districts has killed someone from your District. That fact distances the Districts psychologically as well as physically, making cooperation unlikely in event of a rebellion.

Other themes in the story may include reciprocity and friendships. In the Hunger Games, Katniss forms an alliance with Rue, a young female tribute from District 11, an expert in finding hiding places and medicinal plants.  In return, Katniss, a bow-and-arrow specialist, provides food and security. We see that basically there is a theme of you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Another reason why this alliance was so moving was because Rue was a 12 year old girl, the same age as Katniss’s younger sister who was originally picked at the reaping as the female tribute for the 74th Hunger Games. Katniss, at this moment, was acting as mother to Prim, when their own mother spiraled into a horrible depression after her husband died in a coal mining accident. When Prim’s name was called at the reaping, in a natural instinct to protect her younger sister, Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place. Many times in the book, Katniss likens Rue to her very own sister Prim which is why, Katniss decided to ally with Rue. When Rue dies through the hands of another tribute, Katniss is extremely hurt and pained at this and goes into a stage of emotional distraught for both not being able to save Rue and also for killing the tribute who killed Rue.

Katniss protection of Rue (the District 11 tribute) has not gone unnoticed, she has developed a good reputation in the game. When Katniss is about to get killed, she is saved by the boy tribute from District 11 when he finds out that she had been nice to Rue. Watching the Games on television the people of District 11 reward Katniss by sending her a gift. We see that the Power of reputation is a very powerful tool that can be used.

Lastly, there is a strong fight versus flight theme. The story shows that there are different survival strategies. The physically imposing boy tributes from District 1 and 2 choose to engage in physical fights, which serves them well against weaker opponents but there are risks of injuries too. The younger and physically weaker tributes choose to flee and stay hidden. Or, alternatively, they form coalitions and seek out friendships. This is the tend-and-befriend strategy, which in the end gives Katniss the edge in survival.

(c) Ezra Sumbillo