Kitchen & Aromas.
- Iliana Lanuza
- 19 ene 2021
- 5 Min. de lectura
Actualizado: 3 feb 2021
Can you imagine a kitchen without a aromas, any smell good or bad? Can you imagine life without aroma? I don't. The power of smell enriches your life, giving it another dimension that we might take for granted.
Hello Welcome to my personal blog "kitchen and letters"
"The sense of smell is the most primitive of all our senses and it is linked to some of the oldest and deepest parts of the brain. As we breathe in the aromas of the essential oils, it can trigger emotional and even physical responses and allow vivid memory recall of people or places.
When we breathe in aromatic molecules, they travel to the top of the nose where the molecules come in contact with specialized nerve cells called Olfactory cells. These cells have tiny hairs which recognize a specific aroma through the ‘lock and key’ process. This means each hair will only recognize a specific aroma. This process produces nerve impulses which travel to the limbic system, the part of the brain which is most concerned with survival, instincts and emotions.
It is thought by scientists that the activity of the nerve signal passing through this region causes mood change by altering brain chemistry"
The same way essential oils travel through our noises, food aromas travel through it too. Today I woke up with a mission to put near me as many different aromas as I could. So, I put my diffuser with a blend called "clarity" in my bedroom, I walked into the kitchen to put some chickpeas with different spices to boil, I made coffee and tea. I walked to my bedroom to do my morning yoga. I wanted to have all these aromas at once. I wanted to see how many I recognize while doing my yoga meditation and inhalations. I guarantee you this will not be the only time I write about it. I love smelling, the good and the bad stuff. I'm truly fascinated by this sense.
Our sense of smell starts developing at a relatively early age. Between 6 weeks and 7 weeks of pregnancy, olfactory neurons, which help our brain to process odors, develop. By 7 to 8 weeks, the two symmetrical nasal cavities that are the foundation of our nose have formed.
Nowadays, more than before we are reminded of our sense of smell, one of our most precious senses but of our most underestimated ones. I think for the first time a strange virus has take over our lives and our senses. If you lose your sense of smell what can you eat? Do you feel hungry? or do we eat because we have it in our brains that we must eat to survive? but, what if the food is spoiled, are we able to recognise it?
Our sense of smell goes far beyond food, we use it all the time to identify if something is not good, we unconsciously smell people, (not like dogs do that will be funny), we have the capability to smell danger, to smell if someone agrees with our immune system or not. There are studies that argue that with our sense of is closely linked to our memory.
Research has shown that our body odour, produced by the genes which make up our immune system, can help us subconsciously choose our partners.
I remember when I lived in England, and I visited my family here in Mexico I just to bring more cloths of what I knew I was going to need. At the end of my stay, I had all my cloth freshly washed, everything! Super clean, not because I was lazy, but because when ever I felt homesick, I had a sniff of it. I loved how I could smell the sun, the air from my home, the soap that I grew up with. I loved it! Once I found a soap that smelled like it, Ecover had it. It was a non artificial smell, clean ,fresh but natural. That smell helped me survive many long winter days.
Smell can help us improve our health( there will be people vias about this subject, I promise to have research soon about it) in the recent months I started to study and to use essential oils. I wanted to create a nice atmosphere in the house. I did not wanted to get something artificial, and as a researcher, I have continue to research about the subject, before I talk about something I like to have as much of the experience myself so I know and understand the feeling of it. All I can tell you is that after about 9 months of smelling essential oils everyday, my health has improved. I will discuss this in another post, and maybe is the fact that the smell travels to the limbic system that helps with stress and inflammation.
Everyone of us has 40 million of olfactory receptors that detect odor. Our kitchen has the capability to detect more than a 1 trillion of different smells!!
So, you might ask what does all this have to do with kitchens? Well, right not, honestly, I wanted you to have a little idea of how we perceive aromas, how our sense of smell works and how interesting it is! I wanted to make it exciting so you can kept reading, and you wait for the next time I talk about it, and of course I love it, its fascinating. How just as primitive as it can be that through smell we can choose a lover, we can smell fire before we see it, it can takes us back to a time in our lives, it can warn us of danger, it can helps us with that gut feeling, we can smell the rain, we can smell of course food! For me is like MAGIC! Of course there are bad smells, but I try not to think of them.
Well, smells contribute to our taste. If it was not for our sense of smell things would not taste the same. Can you imagine the flavor of your favorite dish without the aroma? Food can trigger many memories, desires and will keep us together, our brains are triggered by the aromas that food produce and with it all the exciting memories that are connected to it! So, when we are gathered with friends and family, with your partner, the aroma is responsible in big part of that connection and the outcome of it. Next time you choose a dish remember how its smells, depending on that could be the success of it.
Thank you for reading.
In good food,
Iliana Lanuza
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