While having dinner with friends this week, the discussion of food and consumption coming from the source becomes contentious. "Green chili stew is most delicious when eaten in Santa Fe," a member of the party offers when another disagrees, "If we had a New Mexican restaurant here, people would eat our food and think of New Mexico and therefore, enjoy our food - if authentically prepared - as much as they might enjoy a meal consumed in New Mexico." The discussion becomes more dynamic when my wife offers; "Sourdough bread tastes better in San Francisco." The friendly battle is on!

When my wife and I married, I enlisted in the Air Force and we receive orders to our first base in Albuquerque, N.M. The Land of Enchantment readjusts my culinary palate. I learn to love green chilies, posole and fresh-pressed, blue-corn tortillas. Eating huevo rancheros topped with Christmas (red and green salsa) al aire libre, under the bluest sky I've ever seen is transformational. The seasoned black beans are ridiculously delicious and warm my mouth with fresh chilies, the queso fresco is buttery and salty and the egg yoke tastes deeply rich and velvety - a taste only found from the eggs of free-range, organically raised chickens. I am consuming the Southwest. With each bite I build a memory.

I fell in love with New Mexico. Red rocks, pinion wood burning in adobe kivas, Hatch chilies roasting in large barrels, turquoise and silver - I'm enchanted! Twenty-four years after leaving New Mexico, I miss her. Like a friend who understands me, nurtures then disappears, New Mexico has disappeared but must be found. Where has she gone? New Mexico is hiding in the recesses of my mind - in what Carl Jung calls the collective unconscious. My ancestors and those who lived before them found the same satisfaction in life, food and love that I find today. We all have collective thoughts of what makes us, us, of what is good, grounds us and is important in the great scheme of life.

I love clam chowder. While waiting for my flight home from San Francisco last spring, I enjoy a creamy cup of chowder with a side of buttered sourdough bread at an airport restaurant. Thinking my wife might enjoy this same culinary experience; I purchase a round of Boudin San Francisco sourdough bread for the flight home. My wife and I share the bread in our Idaho home and notice the bread doesn't taste the same - not as sour, not as salty. The bread enjoyed as a traditional food of San Francisco is missing a key ingredient when consumed in my Coeur d'Alene kitchen - that key ingredient is San Francisco.

Food is freshest and tastes better when eaten at its source and the flavor is enhanced when consumed close to the origin of the food's life-source. A clam dug and eaten immediately on the beach tastes like the ocean it came from - a briny, sweet, salty delight. A clam eaten in a restaurant a week after digging tastes little like the fresh bi-valve harvested a week prior. The animal begins to degrade the days after harvest and the taste diminishes quickly, becoming a chemically tasting, intolerable meal. The clam eaten hours after harvest creates a pleasurable memory while the metallic clam eaten days after harvest creates an unpleasurable memory.

As humans, we have exceptional memories for taste and smell. A man can smell the same perfume worn by his kindergarten teacher and instantly become mentally transported back to his first classroom learning to write the No. 7. While walking in Seattle's, Pike Place Market one smells the croissants baking at Le Panier and daydreams of being in grandmother's kitchen eating buttered, homemade bread as a child. Smell creates mental flashbacks.

People nourish their bodies and mind by smelling then tasting. Humans are biologically predisposed through smell and taste to recognize food that makes them sick. By smelling then tasting food, one gains an aversion to food that tastes like other food that made the person sick or tasted unpleasurable previously; therefore avoiding the food. Conversely, when smelling food that is paired with joyous or happy experiences, we crave to repeat the positive experience and search to consume more of the same type of food, recreating happy thoughts.

So who's right? Does food taste better at the source or does green chili stew and sourdough bread taste the same in San Francisco and Santa Fe as they do in North Idaho? Psychologically, the pleasure of food eaten at home is based on one's present psychological state, memories of past experiences eating that food, the setting the food is consumed in, who the food is being consumed with and the mood set while eating the meal. Biologically, the way food tastes depends on the temperature of the food, the time of harvest or preparation, previous food recently eaten, the history of the diner's food consumption, the freshness of ingredients, the time of year, how far from the equator the food is consumed, the barometric pressure, odors and air pollution, the physical health of the diner and numerous other biological issues. Does food taste better when consumed at its source? The debate continues.

Bill Rutherford is a psychotherapist, public speaker, elementary school counselor, adjunct college psychology instructor and executive chef, and owner of Rutherford Education Group. Please email him at [email protected].