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" The more we enjoy our food, the more efficiently our bodies make use of its nutrients. In a now-classic experiment done in the 1970s, researchers in Thailand and Sweden fed volunteers from each country identical spicy Thai meals, then measured how much iron each volunteer had absorbed from the meal. The Thai volunteers absorbed 50 percent more iron from the meal than the Swedes; the researchers hypothesized that being familiar with the food served, and liking it, helped the Thai women digest it more effectively. In the next phase of the study, researchers took the same meal, mushed it into paste, and fed it to the volunteers again. This time the Thai women absorbed a lot less of the iron than they had before, presumably because mush is not quite as appetizing as real food.14 "
― Harriet Brown , Body of Truth: Change Your Life by Changing the Way You Think about Weight and Health