A few foreign food terms can help you move toward a year of healthy eating

Living in a bilingual city like Miami I’m used to hearing a mash-up of languages. And I appreciate learning how other languages have food-related words that make me say, “That is a perfect word for how I feel.”

I grew up with the Yiddish word nosh, which means to snack. I tell clients that a snack is anything you eat outside of a meal. But too often, people associate snack with chips, puffs and doodles. Yet nosh incorporates all foods. The lesson here is to understand that any food works as a snack and noshing on something nutritious is the best nosh of all.

Shemomechama is from the Georgian language (country, not state). It means to keep on eating even though you are full because the food is delicious. How many of you experienced shemomechama during the holidays? Strategies to avoid this are to take serving plates to the kitchen when the meal is over, start helping with clean up or suggest an after-dinner activity that will rally your company from the table. Some of my clients put a napkin on their plate as a visual reminder to stop eating. Besides not feeling stuffed, a secondary benefit from stopping eating when full is there could be delicious leftovers.

My next favorite is the Japanese word kuchisabishii. This means eating because your mouth is lonely. In English, the closest concept would be mindless eating or eating out of boredom. It is important to eat when you are hungry, but it is equally important to identify what is driving you to eat.

If it is lonely mouth, find an alternative to noshing. It could be physical activity, reading, interacting with a friend or journaling about your feelings. Eat when hungry, not for lonely mouth.

The Germans have a word for the weight gained from emotional eating. It is kummerspeck and literally means grief bacon. I hope when this holiday season ends you don’t have any grief bacon hanging around your hips.

Sheah Rarback is a registered dietitian nutritionist in private practice in Miami. srarback@hotmail.com