Asfar back as I can remember, I’ve experienced the world primarily through my mouth. When I was young, I used to scramble up to the kitchen counter to consume slice after slice of warm, homemade bread slathered in salty butter. My first bite into a gingersnap was a revelation, the crisp shell giving way to the chewy, aromatic center by the simple movement of tongue and jaw. My sense of taste felt extrasensory–a superpower meant for more than mere sustenance. Reeling in bliss, I felt perversely grateful that something–one thing–could give me so much pleasure.
Not everyone has the same experience. Our sense of taste is complex. But whether you’re the average person with 4000 taste buds or a super taster with nearly 10,000, it all starts with chemical reactions.
We sense the five basic tastes–sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami–through chemoreceptors in our tastebuds. Tastebuds are located primarily on our tongue, but they are also sprinkled all over our mouth, digestive system, and even testes, although those taste receptors aren’t connected to your brain.
Each chemoreceptor has its own unique sensitivity, making some able to taste more salty than sweet and others, more sour than bitter. Some sense combinations of tastes, like whatever Sour Patch kids are. But basic taste is just the foundation.
There is also the way food feels in our mouths. Temperature matters (consider cold pizza or hot ice cream.) As does texture. (Crunchy tastes different than chewy. Just ask bacon. And potato chips.) We have receptors for these other sensations all over our mouths as well.
The five tastes with differing intensity levels combined with all the other sensations provide us with endless combinations.
But wait — there’s more
Taste is really a combination of nearly all our senses. Our nose adds flavor by way of smell, and flavor is, arguably, the most important part. When you chew, aroma molecules go up your nose through the back of your throat where they activate odor receptors. There are almost 400 kinds of those, helping us distinguish Morbier from Comte and Merlot from Pinot Noir. Our eyes and ears play a part too, by sensing how food looks and the way it sounds when we chew. Can you imagine eating yellow blueberries or quiet Rice Krispies? Neither can I.
All this talk of stimulating receptors may sound super complicated and sciencey, but the real question is this: How do we decide what we like to eat? And why, in my case, does it feel like heaven is in my mouth?
To answer this question, my doctor brain has to first drain the soul out of it.
So here goes:
The sensory profile of a given food goes to different parts of our brain, the most primal being the basal brain–the part needed for survival. So if something tastes like poison or spoiled milk, our basal brain tells us not to swallow it. Other signals go to higher functioning areas, like the ventral forebrain, which controls emotions and memories, or the dorsal region, which makes us crave certain flavors. Once those neuronal connections are laid down, a given food will trigger an emotional memory. If the memory is pleasant, our brain makes us want to eat it. If it’s negative, we’ll want to spit it out.
In other words
Remember when you were a kid, and you had birthday cake for the first time? It smelled sweet and looked pretty. The flavor was delicious, and the burst of sugar made you feel amazing. Creamy frosting provided a smooth texture for the moist crumbly cake. From that moment on, every time you encountered a birthday cake, you likely remembered your first time. You feel happy. You want to eat it. And so you eat it, and when you do, you feel even happier, creating a positive feedback loop. Maybe Marie Antoinette, in her twisted wisdom, was onto something.
This neural loop also explains why dieting is so hard. We are hard-wired to eat food that tastes good. There’s even a science behind making foods with the perfect combination of sweet, salty, and fatty to make our brains crave it. It’s called the bliss point. It’s why we have Cheetos.
There is yet another, hormonal, component to the way food makes us feel. When we eat carbohydrates, like bread and ice cream, they are broken down to sugars in our gut. The increase in blood sugar makes our brain release serotonin, a hormone that makes us feel sleepy, content, and safe. It’s why a big bowl of pasta after a long day at work is so enticing.
Taste isn’t simply one thing. In my case, it is the entryway to my inside world. Anytime I need to feel something, I can spin through my compendium of memories and choose a flavor. A little chocolate for pleasure. Fried chicken for relief. I can escape into a bowl of truffled fettucini alfredo or cry into a roast pork sandwich. And since eating is something I need to do every day, the fun never ends. I can wake up tomorrow and do it all over again.
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