A new year, a new malady
Did you know that “raja” is a legitimate Scrabble word? I didn’t and I’m a pretty decent Scrabble player.
In fact, my friend’s niece thinks I am a Scrabble queen because I taught her about adding an s, r or d to a word and making a new word to get points for both, a pretty common Scrabble tactic.
Yet I didn’t know raja was a word you can use until I played with some other friends recently. And being a Scrabble queen is fitting as the word “raja” means prince or other type of royalty or nobility, someone who would be honored at a royal feast.
I also didn’t know that blood in the body is blue and doesn’t turn red until it hits oxygen, or at least that was what I was just told. How did I reach my half shelf-life age and not know that???
Turns out, it’s not true.
Blood is red whether it is in your body or outside of it, whether you cut yourself or are watching a good horror flick. Your veins look blue because of the way the light hits them through your skin. Still, I hadn’t even thought of the color of blood until a recent conversation.
Now I know why Valentine’s hearts and candy boxes are always red.
I wondered if it was like the fact that lobsters are dark brownish and only turn red when you cook them. I have known this since I was a kid and local fishermen used to bring my family lobsters all the time. But I think some people don’t know this.
(In my younger years working at a seaside gift shop, I sold a ton of toy stuffed red lobsters and wondered why tourists would buy their kid a stuffed toy of a dead crustacean).
It was only three weeks ago that I learned how to chop an onion when a cooking website emailed me a demo video.
Now calm down, I have chopped plenty of onions in my life.
I just used to chop them badly and uneven. It would take forever and cause a lot of tears. And not only the normal onion sting tears but downright bawling when I almost chopped off the end of my thumb.
(Next up in the “to learn” list, how to slice the damn things. Onion rings are the bestest!)
I continue to be floored by things I don’t know.
Here is something else I didn’t know-did YOU know that “food noise” is a real term and a real thing?
And no, it is not the snap, crackle and pop sounds your Rice Krispies make when you pour milk on them.
It is not the sound your body makes after you have indulged a little too much at Taco Bell.
And it is not the sound of the lobster claw hitting the lid of your mom’s large pot when it wants out of the boiling water.
(Sorry about that last one. It’s just that the audio and visual still traumatize me so much I just had to share.)
According to a Google AI bot, “food noise is the term for constant, intrusive thoughts about food, which can lead to preoccupations with what to eat, when to eat and cravings. It can feel like relentless mental chatter even when you’re not hungry and may be accompanied by feelings of guilt or obsession.”
And I totally have it!
Welcome to 2026.
I still have MS and now I have more random, un-multiple sclerosis brain ramblings that are also unhealthy and I must try to figure out how to exist around.
Damn.
Food noise is why I have a culinary website emailing me tips and recipes in the first place.
(Actually, more like six companies but I only pay attention to three.)
It is why when TV commercials start to annoy me, I become enthralled with cooking reels on Facebook. Like bad foods, they are addictive.
(Before I learned about food noise I took to calling them food porn.)
It is why in the above examples of things I didn’t know, I keep turning to food.
Raja into feast.
Blood into lobsters. And I don’t even like lobster.
Healthy onions into onion rings.
It’s why even as I am typing this at 9:30 AM, I’m already thinking about lunch!
Now that I recognize the problem, what am I to do about it?
I thought maybe constantly thinking about food wasn’t the actual problem and that aversion therapy might be effective.
What if the only food I thought about were vegetables, especially the bad “B” ones; beets, broccoli and brussel sprouts?
But let’s be realistic- there’s no way I am doing that.
I am trying to get mentally healthy- not turn my life into a dark, nightmarish existence.
I turned back to the Google AI bot thing.
Suggestions to silence food noise included practice mindful eating- isn’t the idea to take food off your mind, get plenty of rest- not a problem and dreaming of pudding is a pleasant night’s sleep, choose filling foods- that just makes me think of Keebler cookies filled with fudgy cream, and know your triggers- hello, like everything…
Thanks AI.
The one possibly helpful suggestion AI made was to move your body.
That could be productive.
It’s hard to think about munching if you are on a treadmill and just focusing on not letting your clumsy self fall off and when your workout will be done. And for some weird reason, my gym forbids food in the cardio section.
Also, if I walk while eating an ice cream cone, I tend to trip.
MS and food noise working together to bring me down.
Multiple sclerosis gives me a TON of brain chatter- symptoms, potential cures, no cures, RXS, insurance, infusions, appointments, money issues and on and on…
I can’t completely turn it off.
But sometimes, I can turn it down.
Everything in my MS life requires balance and while some days negotiating that mental balance beam goes better than others, maybe this is what I need to do to combat food noise as well.
When my brain heads toward noisy foods I will try to keep it in check with healthier things like thoughts of dog and baby videos, or friends, or great music or moving my body.
In fact, thinking of those things can help with my multiple sclerosis noise too.
In this life we live we are a work in progress, and it will continue to be so.
A work in progress with a side of fries maybe, but still…
We will see…
In the meantime, could someone please get my ear buds and some really loud, really good music to quiet my noisy brain…
Source: yvonnedesousa.com