After having guests over for dinner, my friend Carl Willat realized he had the ingredients for a root-beer float: Haagen-Daz vanilla ice cream and A&W root beer. He hadn’t thought about root beer floats in years. He made one. The next day he made another one. He ran out of root beer, bought some more. The day after that, another one. They seemed to taste better and better each day. He ran out of ice cream, bought some more. The next day, another root-beer float. The next day, another one. Toward the end of the week, he found himself thinking: When am I going to have one tomorrow? He had to force himself to stop buying ice cream and root beer, and after a while he didn’t think about them anymore.
At the heart of the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet is the idea that we learn to associate flavors (more precisely, smells) with calories. Here is a vivid example.
I’ve noticed this learning with liquor. A few months ago I bought my first bottle of rum to flavor yogurt. Sometimes I drank the rum without yogurt, and it tasted better and better.
After having guests over for dinner, my friend Carl Willat realized he had the ingredients for a root-beer float: Haagen-Daz vanilla ice cream and A&W root beer. He hadn’t thought about root beer floats in years. He made one. The next day he made another one. He ran out of root beer, bought some more. The day after that, another one. They seemed to taste better and better each day. He ran out of ice cream, bought some more. The next day, another root-beer float. The next day, another one. Toward the end of the week, he found himself thinking: When am I going to have one tomorrow? He had to force himself to stop buying ice cream and root beer, and after a while he didn’t think about them anymore.
At the heart of the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet is the idea that we learn to associate flavors (more precisely, smells) with calories. Here is a vivid example.
I’ve noticed this learning with liquor. A few months ago I bought my first bottle of rum to flavor yogurt. Sometimes I drank the rum without yogurt, and it tasted better and better.