Taste Sensations

After watching a documentary about the evolution of our taste buds it got me thinking about how our senses may be contributing towards the obesity epidemic. The documentary explained that the 5 basic senses evolved to help humans stand a better chance of surviving when foraging for food.

 

The five senses are:

1. Sour
2. Bitter
3. Savoury
4. Salt
5. Sweet

The first three senses don’t seem to be involved with the process of weight gain but let’s briefly discuss their role. For many people the sour sensation can be an unpleasant experience. It is also a good sign that a food may have gone rotten so it could harbour harmful bacteria. The bitter sense is another protective taste; it was a good sign that plants that may contain poison. Both these senses would help our ancestors avoid eating any potentially dangerous foods.

 

The savoury sense helped our ancestors to detect quality protein in foods. Protein is essential for healthy growth and maintenance of body tissues. Back in primitive times protein was scarce, thus a savoury taste evolved to be pleasant and drive humans to eat foods that contain the protein we needed for survival.

The salt sense also developed a nice, distinctive taste to drive humans to seek out foods which contained salt. Salt is essential for the correct function of our brain and nervous system. Most basic foods which made up a large portion of the diet in primitive times contained little salt. Thus sensing salt in food was beneficial in order to obtain enough for human needs. The problem now is that salt is plentiful, as it is added to a huge amount of foods and products. Today salt intake in the western world is far too high, and this alone contributes a little to weight as it causes the body to hold more water. Often people who decide to eat less food will lose weight because there is a natural reduction in salt intake; they lose water and some fat.

Learn more about sodium intake and weight gains 

The sweet taste and the obesity epidemic

Finally the sweet sense helped humans to detect the small amounts of sugar in food. Energy is the most important nutrient for human survival, and carbohydrates (sugars) are the preferred energy source. Once sugar was detected this sensation may have driven humans to eat more food in order to obtain a greater amount of energy for survival. In primitive times food was too scarce for humans to consume too much energy, for this reason body weight was controlled naturally.

However today food is plentiful, it’s everywhere we go and most foods have some added sugar. If people still have a basic instinct to obtain energy in the form of sugar, then many of the foods available could become potentially addictive. In fact many natural, high carb foods such as potatoes, grains, oats and wheat are often blamed as “fattening foods”. These foods don’t contain lots of fat but many products made from these basic foods have added sugars and salt, possibly making them highly addictive to people with a sensitive sweet taste (sweet tooth).
The sweet sensation that evolved to help humans stand a better chance of survival could be the main reason for the obesity epidemic in society today.

I believed the way to control sugar intake was to trick my taste buds to help me lose weight. I tried to sensitize my sweet taste buds so only a little sugar tasted very sweet thus I consumed less sugar.