Food always makes happy, for this reason iNMSOL proposes a very nice saying: Full belly, happy heart (A barriga llena, corazón contento).
“Full belly, happy heart.” What does it literally mean? Once we have eaten and satiated our appetite, we feel happy and satisfied.
When we cover the basic needs of the body like eating and sleeping, we can enjoy a better disposition to devote ourselves to meet the needs of the spirit. Likewise, the phrase implies the idea that feeding ourselves is essential to be able to devote ourselves better to the everyday life.
Throughout Spain there are different variants:
• full belly does not feel sorry;
• tired belly, happy heart;
• full belly does not breed bad thinking.
There are also phrases that we can use precisely to express the opposite idea, such as “empty gut, heart without joy.”
In English, on the other hand, the saying can be translated also as “full stomach, contented heart”.
Let’s look at literal translations, because not all languages have equivalents:
• in Italian “pancia piena, cuore contento”;
• in German “voller Bauch, glückliches Herz”;
• in French “ventre plein, coeur heureux”;
• in Spanish “a barriga llena, corazón contento”.
What other languages do you know?