Better Bites with Kiija: Relearning to Taste

How we eat seems quite simple: food, spork, mouth, repeat. Taste, however, is a matter much more complex. It’s a process that involves taste buds, neurotransmitters, the brain and a whole host of other biologic functions. We have nerve endings that fire, transmitting neural impulses to the brain allowing us to process, identify and experience and taste what we are eating. There is still so much we do not know or fully understand about how our brains function, but more and more is being learned every day. Specifically, more is being learned about how taste and how we eat are connected.

Have you ever noticed how when you eat foods with some combination of sweet, salty and/or rich flavors you tend to want to eat more foods with sweet, salty and/or rich flavors, whether it’s cured meat, chips or your sister’s birthday cake? Have you also noticed that when faced with a cookie or apple at snack time, you’re usually drawn more to the cookie? Can you blame kids, like those on Jamie Oliver’s recent Food Revolution TV show, for picking the souped-up sweet flavor of chocolate milk over plain old, delicious but decidedly not chocolaty milk? Dr. David Kessler, former commissioner of the FDA, in his book, helps us understand the science behind eating experiences like the ones above. He describes his holy trinity of flavors most patable to us: fat, salt and sweet. These are flavors that, unlike other flavors, trigger instinctive responses in us to eat more foods with the same taste of fat, salt and sweet. He points out that most manufactured food has these tastes in spades (do the slogans “betcha you can’t eat just one” and “once you pop, you can’t stop!” ring a bell?). Not only do they contain combinations of sugar, fat and salt but they have engineered substances that are sweeter than sugar, chemically restructured fats and amounts of sodium often in excess of our daily requirement. Sweet, salt and fat are a heady combination of flavors that sets off neurologic fireworks in us and the more concentrated, processed versions of the natural sources of sweet, salt and fat flavors triggers a proportionately more intense reaction. This combo stimulates the same part of the brain that heroin does and triggers instinctive responses in us to eat, eat, eat – instinct bred into our ancestors to prevent starvation in times of scarcity.

When we are constantly bombarded by these flavor fireworks, we can overstimulate the part of our brain that regulates how full we feel, how we taste and how we eat, knocking us off kilter. Suddenly, our innate ability to judge satisfaction, hunger and over-all equilibrium are compromised. With that fail-safe gone, we often eat and eat and eat, to satisfy the craving for more of those fireworks – eating more sweet, salt and fat. Kessler calls this being in a state of ‘hypereating’.

It isn’t impossible to regain our taste equilibrium, though. It just takes a little concerted effort to unlearn harmful eating habits and a willing palate.

For me, it started with a re-discovery of simple cooking. A pot of leek and potato soup, in fact. Before that, I admit to being one of those people who believed in the healthy promises of ‘fake food’. You know, artificial sweeteners, faux fats and the like. Hello 100-calorie pack snack foods and aspertane-spiked yogurt! I avoided the ‘real’ versions of those things in the attempt to make healthier food choices. The irony was, these fake versions were even worse for me and my sense of taste than the original versions! Artificial sweeteners are notorious for warping your sense of sweet and lets just say faux-fats like olestra are better off down the tubes where I eventually sent them. After becoming so used to these intense flavors, I really had to make an effort to train my palate back into appreciating more subtle flavors.

Thank goodness, I was able to begin that readjustment with a bowl of soup. There were all of maybe 5 ingredients in the dish, and tasting the result was a revelation to me. Suddenly, instead of SWEET! SALT! FAT! flavors overwhelming my taste buds, I was able to appreciate the more nuanced flavors of food cooked from scratch. A little salt, a little pepper, a kiss of butter, golden potato and melted leek. Food didn’t need fireworks to taste delicious. Once I knew what real delicious food was supposed to taste like (and perhaps, more importantly, I cut back on the fake stuff) I was able to get in better touch with my body’s needs for food and nourishment. Eating more real foods, simply prepared, I was able to help my overstimulated brain regroup and recalibrate my innate satiety and hunger detectors.
Eating whole, minimally refined foods seems to be a recurring theme here. It’s true. Eating simply prepared grains, breads, vegetables and yes, even the occasional sweet treat made from whole, ‘real’ ingredients is just better for you all around than their highly processed counterparts. That said, do I still eat some processed foods? Sure. Sometimes, a girl is just going to enjoy an oreo. But I can approach it with caution and the knowledge of what those kinds of food really do to me, and how much better real food can be. We all can.

Kiija Manty-Miller I’m not a chef, not a PhD (although maybe someday I will be…), but someone who is passionate about food and cooking, a nut for nutrition and excited about eating well. I’m no poster child for fit America, but I’m someone who is taking on healthy living with hope, humility and a sense of humor. I’ll be stopping in once a month and share some of the insight I’ve gained on my way to more healthful living, inside and out.