Mindful eating: A wellness tool, or trendy byte?

Amid the hubbub of urban life – the chaos, the din, screens everywhere you turn – there is a counterpoint that invites you to slow down, savour and reconnect with your food: mindful eating. 

This is a practice that promises a range of refreshing benefits, from improved digestion to a healthier relationship with eating. The mindful eating wave started slowly, emerging in the early 2000s as an extension of the mindfulness movement (which finds its roots in Buddhism) at large. It started being noticed by scientists and practitioners as beneficial in various ways, when practised correctly. There was growing research interest.

It didn’t take a long time, though, for mindful eating to then proliferate into a trendy buzzword in the wellness industry. Case in point: meditation and mindfulness apps have now swiftly capitalised on this trend, offering guided sessions on mindful eating as part of their subscriptions. These apps promise to integrate mindfulness into meal habits with just a few taps, turning a deeply personal practice into a marketable commodity. 

But beneath the surface of this seemingly simple concept lies a complex web of cultural nuance that demands a closer look.

What research says

Mindful eating is a habit of being fully present and aware of your food. It’s about engaging all your senses—sight, smell, taste, texture, and sound—while consuming a meal and paying attention to the signals your body sends about hunger, appetite, and satisfaction. Rather than eating on autopilot or impulse, mindful eating encourages you to slow down, savour your food, and make conscious choices about what, when, and how much you eat. It isn’t just about what foods you eat, but how you approach eating as an act. The idea is to break away from your life’s rapidly moving landscape and the over-exposure to multiple screens, so that you can develop a more present and conscious method of consumption—focusing on the experience of eating itself, enjoying the taste, texture, and even the feeling of nourishment.

What does this do? “Attentive” eating has proven to have a few benefits. For one, it can help regulate your appetite–you really know when you’re full when you’re not distracted. Most interestingly, this “knowing” can aid even a few hours laters, when you usually feel like snacking; research has shown that those who remember their lunches vividly tend to have a moderate snack later on. It can also help satisfy cravings better: really enjoying an indulgence with mindfulness keeps you from having too much of it. 

Mindful eating largely just asks you to be thoughtful about what you eat in your daily life. But it is also marketed in the wellness industry as a respite from overeating, emotional eating, and rushed meal habits that are common in today’s fast-paced metropolis. 

There is substantial research to prove that mindful eating holds promise when practised with intention. But think about it: this is a technique that places the entire onus of success on individuals, no matter what their circumstances–putting it at the risk of becoming another commodified wellness fad.

The true potential of mindful eating lies in fostering a compassionate and guilt-free approach to food—one that acknowledges the complexities of modern life rather than oversimplifying them into compact diet plans and apps.

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Double-edged sword

At its core, mindful eating emerged as a response to disordered eating habits—an umbrella term encompassing a range of unhealthy behaviors, such as binge eating, restrictive dieting, and emotional overeating. These patterns–which also have a genetic component to them–stem from a fraught relationship with food, exacerbated by societal pressures to conform to unrealistic body standards. 

Mindful eating seeks to counter these behaviors by encouraging individuals to listen to their body’s hunger and cues while forging a more intuitive and compassionate approach to consumption. It also positions itself as an antidote to diet culture, which perpetuates harmful cycles of restriction and guilt, turning food into a battleground rather than a source of nourishment.

In countries like India, socio-economic realities shape individuals’ access to food. Hidden hunger—a term used to describe micronutrient deficiencies that occur even when calorie needs are met—affects more than 80% of Indian adolescents. While mindful eating aims to promote health and balance, it may not be a suitable approach for those who have inconsistent or poor access to nutritious food.

Dr. Kirthika Tharan, a Bengaluru-based nutritional psychologist, underscores this tension. She cautions against the dangers of marketing mindful eating as a universal solution, warning that such narratives risk alienating communities struggling with basic food security. “In a country where the most vulnerable have no food security, nutrition, and a respite from hunger, it can be a bit myopic to talk about eating mindfully,” she notes. Yet, she also recognises the value of mindful practices, drawing parallels with traditional Indian eating habits, which emphasise moderation and intuition over rigid dietary rules and schedules.

The disconnect becomes even starker when mindful eating is marketed in urban centers as an aspirational lifestyle. While the concept advocates distraction-free meals and mindful cooking (engaging with the sensations of cooking and how you’re transforming ingredients to food), it rarely addresses the structural inequalities that shape food practices. For example, in many Indian households, domestic labour—including meal preparation—is disproportionately shouldered by women. Even within homes with access to nutritious meals, women don’t eat the same food as the men–compromising their own nutrition. In such contexts, what does it mean to “cook mindfully” when the labour is often invisibly performed? 

Similarly, in fast-paced, mechanised cityscapes, where time is a luxury, how practical is the expectation of presence and reflection at every meal?

Also read: India’s ancient grain is facing an uphill battle

Criticisms

Practicing mindful eating may not be the easy, perfect solution that the wellness industry is making it out to be. Eating in this manner, for every meal, is decidedly challenging to implement in real life. This technique is frequently marketed as a quick fix or 'magic bullet' for weight loss, promising to reverse disordered eating patterns effortlessly. However, mindful eating requires deep self-awareness, consistent practice, and a lifestyle shift—elements that cannot be condensed into a social media infographic or trendy diet plan.

This complexity is further compounded by the lack of a standardised definition or protocol for mindful eating behavior. In fact, we are actually not quite certain what constitutes ‘mindful eating’– the current research relies on varied mindfulness scales and questionnaires.

A review of 68 studies on mindful eating showed improvements in eating behaviors such as slower eating, recognising fullness, and reducing binge and emotional eating. Still, it did not consistently lead to weight loss. Moreover, trials incorporating mindfulness concepts demonstrated some benefits, like decreased sweets intake and stable glucose levels, but no significant weight loss outcomes.

Dr Deepta Nagpal, a nutritionist and researcher based in New Delhi, agrees that employing mindfulness in the way you eat can reduce your stress levels – it can be a way to counter emotional eating. But she’s cautious: it is not uncommon to develop an ‘obsessive and compulsive’ reliance on this way of eating–which can, tragically, lay the ground for eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia.

“The Indian diet is carb-heavy in nature. So, we can practice portion control, but I see women who weigh themselves every day and obsess over 200-400 grams, excessively checking what they’re eating. This is not healthy either,” she underscores.

There is a cost to mindful eating too, and it is not insignificant. Mindfulness in eating can be an expensive practice in terms of money, of course, but it also costs you mental and emotional work. It assumes a level of emotional bandwidth and financial freedom to make intentional choices about food and to invest time in self-reflection during meals—something that many working class families simply do not have in the throes of informal labour.

Also see: Ancient Pokkali fields in decline

More harm than good?

It’s not that mindful eating itself is inherently harmful—it’s the way it’s being packaged and sold that warrants concern. 

Additionally, in the context of an industry that thrives on the idea of constant self-optimisation, mindful eating can sometimes exacerbate the very issues it seeks to address—like food guilt, perfectionism, and unrealistic body expectations. The idea that you should eat every single meal perfectly and with complete awareness can lead to an overwhelming sense of failure when you’re not perfect, especially if you are navigating a life full of distractions, responsibilities, and interpersonal issues. 

While there is a pressing need, more than ever, to be in touch with what goes into our bodies, we must also recognise that there are deeper sociological and psychological factors at play that influence and shape our relationship with food. Mindful eating is a tool, not a cure-all, and its potential is best realised when combined with a compassionate, holistic approach to well-being—one that prioritises balance, not perfection.

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(Video credit: globalhungerindex.org)