By Adam Kingl and Jakub Radzikowski
Nutrition is a means to performance, improving our body and brain’s abilities to concentrate, mitigate anxiety and sustain energy throughout the day, among many other wellness benefits.
When we teach executives and can grab a private moment to ask them, ‘How are you… really,’ the most common response we hear is ‘exhausted’. The usual refrain that follows is that they never allow themselves a moment to switch off from work, to quiet the mind, to find opportunities to create flow – the mind-body connection that craftspeople will often give as the reason they practice their given trade. While we might assume that this would be a matter of creating time that doesn’t exist for the busy professional, we can create a moment each day to do better for our mind, bodies and state of being, and that’s through cooking. Preparing a meal might just be the busy professional’s golden ticket to living with a little more wellness, calm, health, mindfulness, concentration, release and creative expression.
When we think about cooking for wellbeing, certain themes usually rise to the foreground: reducing calories, saving time or detoxing. These topics saturate the market and for good reasons, but there are underappreciated themes that we hear all the time when we ask executives what they would like to enhance from their diets: focus, short- and long-term energy, creativity and inspiration. Professionals also tell us that they wish they had a few go-to recipes they could bring to the office in the morning for their colleagues, recipes that would offer comfort and solace for hard days whereby they wouldn’t have to rely on takeaways, reliable and easy celebratory or weekend dishes that feel like dining in a restaurant at home, meals that feel virtuous to the body when they’ve overindulged or feel run-down, but still satisfy.
While a lot is already known in the field of nutrition, many of the studies are indicative – nutritional research is a very challenging scientific field. Here is an important caveat: approach the research with the mindset that even without definitive evidence, if there is a chance that eating a certain ingredient might help, then why not give yourself an advantage by including it as a part of a balanced diet?
The benefits of cooking
The ‘always-on’ culture of high-performance professions leaves little room for mental and emotional restoration. Time management, disconnecting from the internet or other technology are the most-often promoted solutions, while a very simple, accessible tool of the daily act of cooking is somewhat overlooked. On top of being a good way to nourish your body, preparing meals offers an easy and convenient way to counteract stress, cultivate mindfulness and enhance mental health.
While this seems very common sense, the field investigating the positive influence of engaging in cooking is quite young and still developing. A systematic review into psychosocial benefits of cooking interventions examined eleven studies in which researchers engaged various groups of people (patients, people from specific socio-economic groups and random samples of adults) in cooking activities. The review noted that while the evidence is somewhat modest, there are indications that cooking activities may have positive effects on self-esteem, wellbeing, quality of life and social interaction while reducing anxiety. Several possible explanations for these outcomes were proposed: activities involving multitasking and fine motor control can improve function and reduce depression and anxiety; repeated mastery of recipes enhances self-efficacy; and the social nature of preparing and sharing food contributes to connectedness and belonging.
Cooking can also be considered a form of mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn famously defined mindfulness as ‘paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgmental’ [Kabat-Zinn J. Full Catastrophe Living. New York, N.Y, Dell Publishing, 1991]. While mindful eating is a recognised practice, cooking can similarly serve as a mindful ritual. Low-stakes yet immersive, it grounds the individual through sensory engagement: sights, sounds, textures and aromas of food in transformation. Repetitive tasks such as chopping or stirring can act as anchors of attention, gently drawing focus away from racing thoughts toward the tangible present.
Flow
With practice, cooking can even induce a ‘flow state’: a deep immersion in the process itself. A review on the neuroscience of flow traces the concept to Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal work [Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Flow: The psychology of optimal experience, New York: Harper & Row, 1990], which describes flow as a ‘state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity’. Cooking fits this description elegantly: it involves clear goals (a finished dish), requires concentration (especially for safety and timing), provides immediate feedback (through taste and smell), and delivers intrinsic reward (enjoyment and nourishment). People who reach this state often report losing track of time, experiencing heightened satisfaction and achieving improved emotional regulation, all outcomes increasingly associated with enhanced well-being. But what to cook?
Pantry for performance
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, best remembered today as a gastronome and the namesake of a luxurious triple-cream French cheese, once wrote: ‘Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you who you are.’ Though originally referring to social class and circumstance, the phrase also implies an intuitive truth: food defines our health. The link between diet and well-being is not a modern discovery. Hippocrates allegedly said: ‘Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food,’ which demonstrates that the therapeutic potential of diet was recognised as early as the 5th century BCE. Across both Eastern and Western traditions, food was long considered a vehicle for healing and balance.
Today, our understanding is more nuanced and grounded in the molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying how nutrients influence the body. Yet nutritional science does remain a challenging field. Studies may often be short, rely on self-reported intake and involve small sample sizes, making broad generalisations difficult. Please have in mind that we are not suggesting that food will act as medicine or that what we present are absolute truths – like in every emerging field of science, the landscape of knowledge is ever changing. Treat this consideration as a way to possibly give yourself a potential advantage rather than a definitive recipe for success.
We ask you to think about food not just as fuel, but as something that gently nudges how you feel and perform throughout the day. Considering cooking more thoughtfully can be a tool for busy professionals to make mindful, informed decisions about their diet, nourishing both body and mind and potentially building a performance advantage.
About the Authors
Adam Kingl and Jakub Radzikowski are the co-authors of ‘Executive Eats: The cookbook for a better working life’ (Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2026).
