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If you eat ice cream, you will earn a sore throat. If you eat fried potatoes, you’ll get better. And sausage, carbonade, brisket is a sure way to get gastritis or worse … We have been convinced for so long that everything tasty is harmful that many have almost completely abandoned their favorite dishes, replacing them with healthy, dietary, hypoallergenic and often tasteless. Or maybe in vain?
THE EVOLUTION OF TASTE
If we did not feel the taste, we simply would not survive. Our ancestors needed this in order, firstly, to evaluate the quality of food, and secondly, to eat what the body needed at a particular moment.
Least of all, for example, we like bitter. And what is bitter? Plants containing toxic alkaloids, including strychnine and quinine. When food spoils, it also takes on a bitter taste. And for our ancestors it was a real salvation. The same with sour taste – dislike for him saved from the temptation to eat a fermented product. By the way, today bitter substances are often used as “repellent agents”. They are added to substances that are dangerous for children and animals – lovers to try the world “by heart”.
The desire to eat something sweet occurs when the body lacks carbohydrates (quick energy) and vitamins.
Salty taste is inherent primarily in table salt. The sodium included in its composition is involved in mineral metabolism and the conduction of nerve impulses. It is vital for the body, and when it is lacking (for example, after intense training, when part of it is excreted from the body along with sweat), we often want salty.
The desire to eat something sweet occurs when the body lacks carbohydrates (quick energy) and vitamins. Our ancestors in this case ate fruits – juicy, sweet fruits warmed by the sun, but we usually go to the confectionery department. But only because there is a choice – our ancestors did not have it.
When there is no taste
The perception of taste over the course of life may weaken, change or even disappear. This condition is called dysgeusia and can occur, for example, during pregnancy, after a sore throat, or as a result of taking medications – antibiotics, sedatives, anticonvulsants, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory and cardiovascular drugs, cholesterol-lowering drugs. And it may be associated with neurosis or mental disorders – hysteria and schizophrenia.
Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Angela Wagner and Walter Kay, have found a link between loss of taste and anorexia. In the course of the study, 16 women who had recovered from this disease, and the same number of participants from the control group, were asked to try sugar and distilled water. In order to objectively evaluate the response to taste, the women underwent MRI brain scans. It turned out that former patients with anorexia had disorders in the brain structure responsible for taste recognition. It is quite possible that the lack of taste sensations and the inability to enjoy food is one of the reasons for the excessive thinness of such patients.
KIND OF CHILDREN
American researchers from the Monell Center found that love for certain tastes is formed even in the womb. If a woman indulges in vanilla yogurt, chicken with garlic, or mint tea during pregnancy, it is very likely that the child will later enjoy these tastes.
It also plays a role in what and how children are fed in childhood. Many are forced to eat porridge, soup, vegetables, saying that it is healthy. But “useful” for a child is not an argument. As an adult, he most likely will never eat hateful foods. The opposite is true for sweets. They, as a rule, are given as a reward or as a consolation, they are given one at a time so as not to spoil the child’s stomach or teeth. And in adulthood, they often remain a “consolation prize” when something does not work out.
But that’s not all. With age, on average after 45 years, the sensitivity of taste buds decreases. First of all, those responsible for the perception of sweet and salty atrophy. This is why older people sometimes oversalt their food or put a lot of sugar in their tea. At the age of 70, no more than 16–20% of taste buds are active in a person, therefore, appetite often decreases in old age.
USEFUL BUT NOT TASTY
According to nutritionists, our menu should be exceptionally healthy, functional and non-caloric. We move a little – we mostly spend our days in the office and move by car. We eat more than necessary – inevitably a couple of extra pounds appear. However, some researchers argue that even dietary food itself will not be useful if we do not like it. And vice versa: for an appetizing, cooked with love and eaten with pleasure, conditionally, fried potatoes, the body will say “thank you”.
“What kind of reaction does the smell and sight of potatoes sizzling in a frying pan or rich Ukrainian borscht evoke in us? That’s right, a healthy person secretes saliva, and with it – gastric juice, – explains physiologist Rinad Minvaleev. – It is the central nervous system that gives the first command to start digestion, relying on signals from the olfactory and gustatory analyzers. It also takes into account the information that comes through the organs of sight and hearing: the sound of spoons on plates, for example, greatly promotes appetite, not to mention the very type of food and even good table setting. This was pointed out by Academician Pavlov, who received the Nobel Prize for achievements in the study of the central nervous system. And can fresh chicken breast with buckwheat stimulate the secretion of saliva and gastric juice? .. “
What do your taste preferences say about you?
Alice, who got into Wonderland, claimed that “they bite from vinegar, and they are upset by mustard.” Today, many psychologists, including Alexander Makarov, think the same way. He completed his Ph.D. thesis on the relationship between mental health and diet.
According to his classification, the most reliable people are cheese lovers. They are gentle and compliant altruists. Diligent and assiduous choose doctor’s sausage.
Those who prefer the taste of raw vegetables to all other tastes are squeamish and succumb to difficulties.
Spicy food is for passionate natures, and tyrants of all times loved sour food: Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, Joseph Stalin.
Cream cakes, chocolate, condensed milk and cream ice cream are popular with love-deficit children and adults suffering from loneliness. And addiction to light sweets – caramel, candied fruit, jam – is characteristic of infantile, slightly capricious and superficial natures.
Romantics and vagabonds, according to Makarov, love smoked meats and seafood, affectionate and sincere people like fried potatoes, and jealous people like bacon and bacon.
TREAT REHABILITATION
So, tasty food is digested better and brings more benefits. It not only saturates, but also gives pleasure, comforts, improves mood, makes us more resistant to stress. And this applies not only to soup or the second, but also to delicacies – sausages, sausages, cakes, pastries. All that severe nutritionists managed to call useless or even harmful.
Nutritionist, Doctor of Medical Sciences Mikhail Ginzburg is convinced that it may soon turn out that treats also contain some irreplaceable substances. “We know that unfiltered beer contains B vitamins. Dry red wine has antioxidants that protect against premature aging, and tannins that are good for the stomach lining. Cheese and chocolate contain a lot of tyramine, which improves the nutrition of brain cells. What if there is something important in sweets and smoked sausage, necessary for a person, but still unknown to science? Ginzburg suggests.
It has been proven that foodies get more emotions from life, their sensory “baggage” is richer
“The same tyramine or lycopene was simply unknown to science 20-30 years ago. And once we did not suspect the existence of vitamins, polyunsaturated fatty acids, food alkaloids, phospholipids. The list of bioactive substances discovered in food is constantly updated. Of course, this does not mean that sausage or sweets should be eaten in large quantities. But to refuse them just because they are fatty and high-calorie is not worth it.
So, by the way, gourmets do it – people with a developed taste. Their diet is like a palette – it has sweet, and salty, and tart, and a little sour and bitter. The food they eat is delicious, and not all of them are overweight. But it has been proven that gourmets get more emotions from life, their sensory “baggage” is richer, and all this has a beneficial effect on their mood and mental state. Such people are less likely to suffer from depression and other mental disorders and generally get sick less often. So striving for new taste sensations and making your diet more diverse is not pampering at all, but health care.