Nutrition: How does taste work?

Taste.

It is the most sensual part involved in our life; very influential to the degree you enjoy your lifestyle. When does your taste shape? It all begins when you are in the womb, you begin to get preferences based on the foods your mother consumes and feeds you.

Flavour doesn’t come from your tongue. Anyone who had a cold would know that the smell decides the flavour, the tongue can feel whether something is sweet, sour, salty, or spicy. Our sense of smell is able to distinguish between two similar vegetables with the same sugar content based on the volatiles. Volatiles are compounds released by your food whilst you consume it in your mouth.

System of smell is made of two parts. First you smell it. There is orthonasal (smelling it first) and retronasal (Put it in your mouth and whilst you start chewing, compounds called volatiles are released. Swallowing forced the volatiles up your throat and to your nose) that come together in your brain. They interact and that is called flavour. They are subjective, you cannot share your flavour experience. Because it happens in your brain, it is so closely connected to emotion and your memories.

Why is this important? Because this is vital in figuring out how to become healthy.

A few great examples of how it can change your life are below:

– If you have the smell of chocolate while you go through a traumatic experience (break up, finding out about the passing of relative, etc), it may create a negative emotion and association to those foods.
– If someone shocks you by showing you your favourite food (let’s say it was donuts) and then proceeding to show all the components which make it together in a disgusting way, you may never look at a donut the same way.

The latter example is used a lot in shows that try to create shocking wake up calls for their health hazard participant. An example would be someone adding two tablespoons to his two teas a day. The dietician added those sugars up together for the month and it was equal to the sugar content in about thirty jelly donuts.

Psychological taste

I notice that sometimes people have trouble letting go of one particular food or snack, usually something like pizza, crisps, fizzy pop, chocolate. I want to look into the psychological, chemical and emotional reasoning first. If this doesn’t solve the problem, I have a few other tips I’d like you to try.

Fad diets are fanatic about rules. You get a few do’s and a million don’ts. Applying the law of attraction, it is easy to see what goes wrong. The diets don’t always explain clearly why you should find these things repulsive and then starts stating a big list which probably ends up with you wanting it more! Why? Law of attraction focuses on the power of thought.

Don’t think about a pink elephant…

It is well known that if I say don’t think about brownies, all you are thinking about is brownies. Once in the mind, you will get a bit hungry whilst imagining this gooey sweet chocolaty snack. Then the diet or person says something along the lines “don’t think about it! You can not eat that anymore” and before you know it, you shall be munching down on one.

We know we want what we can’t have, but also many dieticians say don’t imagine the item of desire and they take more time mentioning things you shouldn’t eat than all the wonderful things you can eat. Believe it or not, healthy brownies exist – you just have to do a bit of online snooping (probably have to make then yourself) one of my funniest memorable moments like this was when I was trying out Carmen electra s work out and she said put away the bon bons and start working out.

Bon bons began to manifest in my mind, and even after a long work out, all I wanted was to eat 5 or 6 of them in a row. That would basically make my work out useless in regards to burning calories.

The effect of stress on biochemistry

When stressed, we change the biochemistry of our blood. Starts with perception of threat, triggers adrenal glands which releases adrenaline and cortosol (stress soup) which turn on enzymes, turning the fat cell into a fat storing machine. Alerts brain to find those fattening sweet foods. Cortosol is one of the strongest drives it can feel the need to have a drug. Depending on the cortisol, we either are in fat burning mode or bat gaining mode. Our chronic stressful situation causes us to eat more.

We eat more when we are stressed or bored. If you were to meditate right before a meal, becoming aware of your surroundings, feelings and peaceful. Just smell it and embrace the moment. This will allow you to balance your mind, your caloric intake and your mindfulness of eating.

Exercise

Exercise allows us more opioids, which allows us to feel pleasure. On the other hand, high fat and sugar products stimulate the release of opioids. Exercise causes you to stop craving food for pleasure, substituting food with exercise. Basically, exercise helps to make our taste more healthy because we have our needed opioids.

Changing your food lifestyle

It takes your body about a week to change your tastes. Your taste buds on your tongue are formed based on the types of foods you have been consuming in the last week.

Foods we initially detest, we can grow accustomed to and even like once we have tried it at least ten times. That may seem like an exhaustive task, however, it means you can teach yourself to enjoy your healthy foods as much as you did the more unhealthy. It may take a longer time, but patience will be your friend.

Enjoying food both in your mouth and in your body afterwards will make a happier stronger you. Perhaps you already enjoy healthy snacks and feel the results, but in the world of efficiency and speed we are getting less time and gaining more unhealthy habits.

To conclude:

– Our sense of smell is responsible for the flavour; There is orthonasal (smelling it first) and retronasal (Put it in your mouth and whilst you start chewing, compounds called volatiles are released.

– We can train our minds to accept new or previously dislike tastes. This usually takes around ten tries.

– Your taste buds on your tongue are formed based on the types of foods you have been consuming in the last week.

– Enjoying food both in your mouth and in your body afterwards will make a happier stronger you.

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