A healthy diet is essential for building strong bones and a long, independent life. However, many people are hesitant to change their eating habits. Taste is often the main reason.
Fortunately, research has shown that it is possible to retrain our taste buds. By reshaping our response to certain tastes, we can turn healthy foods we don’t like into delicious, delectable treats.
Today you will discover the science behind taste and how you can apply that knowledge to retrain your taste buds. Once you discover the deliciousness of healthier foods, meeting your nutrition goals will become much easier.
The physical effect of taste
Taste is a multifaceted sensation, where information is obtained from different sources.
On the tongue, receptors convert chemical compounds in food into neural signals. These receptors are your taste buds. When certain compounds come into contact with your taste buds, they identify the compounds as sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or savory.
About half of your taste buds can detect all five taste types to varying degrees, and the other half specializes in detecting the intensity of only one of the five.
Our genetic makeup determines which compounds our taste buds can detect. Scientists have observed how differences in certain genes determine people’s food preferences.1
However, taste buds are not the only source of flavor. Olfactory nerves also transmit information that indicates what food tastes like. That’s why losing your sense of smell can drastically change the way you taste food.
In addition, other forms of sensory information about how something tastes are taken into account, such as temperature, texture and whether a food is spicy. Our brain combines all this sensory information to generate the taste sensation.
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Our taste buds sense chemical compounds in food and send signals to our brain about whether that food is sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or savory. Our olfactory nerves provide information about smell that is included in our perception of taste. In addition, physical sensations such as temperature, texture and spice level influence our sense of taste.
Experience also shapes taste
Exposure and habit also influence our sense of taste. For example, babies prefer foods that their mothers consume during pregnancy. Exposure to those foods in the womb helped them develop a taste for them before they were born. This indicates a relationship between what we eat and how we experience taste.
Eating foods high in sugar can reduce our ability to taste sweetness. Our taste buds adapt based on exposure levels. When they experience high levels of sweetness, they respond by lowering their signal levels. Research has even shown that the number of sweetness-sensitive cells can decrease in response to overstimulation.2
The same goes for salty foods. A high-salt diet causes your taste buds to underestimate the saltiness of food. To achieve the experience of saltiness, even more salt is needed.
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Babies show a preference for foods their mothers ate during pregnancy, showing that experience determines taste. If you often eat foods high in sugar or salt, your taste buds begin to under-report the sweetness and saltiness of your food. Then you have to add more sugar or salt to get the same level of flavor.
Manufactured foods have distorted our sense of taste
Processed foods are notorious for containing excessive amounts of sugar and salt. Because eating too many of those flavors numbs their receptors, processed and manufactured foods reduce our ability to taste salty and sweet.
To accommodate this reduced sensitivity, manufacturers of these processed foods therefore increase the sugar and salt content. This creates a terrible feedback loop that makes processed foods even unhealthier.
While manufactured foods become less and less healthy, pure, unprocessed foods remain the same.
This means that even a delicious fruit or vegetable can taste bland if your taste buds are dulled by excessive sugar and salt intake. Natural foods no longer register as tasty because of the way a diet of processed and manufactured foods has changed your taste buds.
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Processed foods are notoriously high in sugar and salt. Consuming overly salty and sugary foods numbs your taste receptors. Then even more salt and sugar are needed to achieve the same taste level. That means a great-tasting piece of produce might not taste good to someone whose taste buds have been altered by eating foods high in sugar and salt.
We can retrain our taste buds
Research presented by the European Society of Cardiology revealed that participants with hypertension were able to adjust their taste perception to increase their appreciation of a low-sodium diet.
Over the course of the 16-week program, participants reduced their salt intake by 30% and increased their enjoyment of a low-salt diet from a rating of 4.8 to a rating of 6.5 on a 10-point scale.3
A study published in the journal Current Biology found that rats given access to water sweetened with 30% liquid sucrose for four weeks experienced a reduced response to sweetness and even a reduced number of taste buds. However, they also found that when they removed the sucrose fluid from the rats’ water, the effects reversed over the course of just four weeks.4
These studies, involving both humans and animals, show that within weeks you can recalibrate your taste buds to enjoy the authentic taste of whole foods. Try these four strategies to reset your taste buds:
- Avoid processed and manufactured foods. – Processed foods are packed with salt, sugar and artificial ingredients. This includes TV dinners, microwaved meals and ready-made meals. Preparing meals from scratch with whole ingredients gives you control over sugar and salt content.
- Choose less sweet and less salty ingredients for your recipes and meals. – For example, instead of a bar, take a square of dark chocolate; use unsweetened creamer in your coffee; and swap the white sugar in a recipe for the recommended amount of a plant-based sugar-free sweetener such as stevia or monk fruit.
- Eat more produce. – Increase the amount of fresh produce in your diet. Add fresh vegetables to your meals, add spinach to your morning smoothie, or eat a piece of fruit and a handful of almonds instead of a snack bar.
- Consume more fiber. – Choose fiber-rich foods, including leafy greens, whole grains and legumes. The extra fiber ensures that you feel full for longer and reduces the need for unhealthy snacks.
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Research has shown that eating foods that are too salty or high in sugar can damage our sense of taste. However, research has also shown that by eliminating excess salt or sugar from your diet, you can restore your natural response to those flavors. By adjusting your diet to reduce salt and sugar intake, you can increase your ability to detect these flavors in food, helping you enjoy a healthier diet.
An alkaline diet of whole foods nourishes your bones
Reducing sugar consumption is beneficial for bone health. Consistently high sugar levels disrupt the bone remodeling cycle and prevent healthy bone development.
Additionally, you’ll provide your body with essential nutrients to build strong bones by eating a diet rich in whole fruits and vegetables. That change also supports the 80/20 pH balanced diet, because fruits and vegetables are alkalizing.
However, this doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the other foods you love. This diet is not about denial. In fact, the 80/20 pH-balanced diet actually requires that 20 percent of each meal consist of acidifying foods. This can include acidifying plant foods, such as most beans, as well as animal products that contain protein and bone-building minerals, such as eggs, fish and organ meats.
Because reducing salt and sugar intake increases your sensitivity to those flavors, you may develop a taste for healthy foods, making them more flavorful. When your bone-building diet is delicious, it becomes irresistible.
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Reducing sugar intake supports bone health. A diet rich in fruits and vegetables reduces added sugars and salt, while adding bone-building nutrients and helping to achieve the 80/20 balance between alkalizing and acidifying foods. The 20 percent of each meal that sours can be plant foods or animal products.
What this means for you
You have the power to shape your own taste preferences. With a little intentional effort, you can unlock a new world of sweetness and flavor hidden in the whole, natural, mostly alkalizing foods in your grocery store’s produce aisle.
The Save Institute developed Bone Appétite to help you turn these healthy ingredients into great meals. With the right preparation, you can turn a vegetable you fancy into a dish you look forward to. By turning healthy eating into delicious dining, Bone Appétite makes building stronger bones irresistible.
Take back control of your taste buds. Instead of letting the food processing industry dictate your taste, build your palate to appreciate the depth and breadth of flavor of natural, whole foods.
References
1 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214799321001077?via%3Dihub
2 https://www.cell.com/trends/endocrinology-metabolism/fulltext/S1043-2760(20)30235-6?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1043276020302356%3Fshowall% 3Dtrue#%20
3 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220523150647.htm
4 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01212-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS096098222201212X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
