Changing Our Taste Buds

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Within a few weeks of eating healthier, our taste sensations change such that foods with lower salt, sugar, and fat content actually taste better.

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Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

How can we overcome our built-in hunger drives for salt, sugar, and fat? We now have scientific evidence to back up the claim that if you go a few weeks cutting down on junk food and animal products, your tastes start to change. We now think humans may actually taste fat, just like we taste sweet, sour, salty. And, people on low-fat diets start liking low-fat foods more, and high-fat foods less.

Our tongues may actually become more sensitive to fat. And the more sensitive our tongue becomes, the less butter, meat, dairy, and eggs we eat. Whereas a blunted taste for fat, if we pile too much of it in our face, is associated with eating more calories, more fat, more dairy, meat, and eggs, and being fatter ourselves. And, this change in sensation, this numbing of our fat sensation, can happen after just a few weeks.

Put people on a low-salt diet, and over the weeks, they like the taste of salt-free soup more and more, and the taste of salty soup less and less. Your tastes physically change. If you let them salt their own soup to taste, they add less and less, the longer on the low-sodium diet. Tastes just as salty, with half the salt. A control group liked lots of salt in their soup, but for those who’d been on salt-restricted diets, regularly salted foods taste way too salty, and they actually preferred soup with less.

People “should be assured that their diet gradually may become more acceptable as their taste for salt diminishes.” The longer we eat healthier foods, the better they taste.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Images thanks to GordonMcDowell and Toenex via flickr. Thanks also to Ellen Reid and Shane Barrett for their Keynote help.

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

How can we overcome our built-in hunger drives for salt, sugar, and fat? We now have scientific evidence to back up the claim that if you go a few weeks cutting down on junk food and animal products, your tastes start to change. We now think humans may actually taste fat, just like we taste sweet, sour, salty. And, people on low-fat diets start liking low-fat foods more, and high-fat foods less.

Our tongues may actually become more sensitive to fat. And the more sensitive our tongue becomes, the less butter, meat, dairy, and eggs we eat. Whereas a blunted taste for fat, if we pile too much of it in our face, is associated with eating more calories, more fat, more dairy, meat, and eggs, and being fatter ourselves. And, this change in sensation, this numbing of our fat sensation, can happen after just a few weeks.

Put people on a low-salt diet, and over the weeks, they like the taste of salt-free soup more and more, and the taste of salty soup less and less. Your tastes physically change. If you let them salt their own soup to taste, they add less and less, the longer on the low-sodium diet. Tastes just as salty, with half the salt. A control group liked lots of salt in their soup, but for those who’d been on salt-restricted diets, regularly salted foods taste way too salty, and they actually preferred soup with less.

People “should be assured that their diet gradually may become more acceptable as their taste for salt diminishes.” The longer we eat healthier foods, the better they taste.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Images thanks to GordonMcDowell and Toenex via flickr. Thanks also to Ellen Reid and Shane Barrett for their Keynote help.

Doctor's Note

This is exciting news! That’s why I’ve always encouraged my patients to think of healthy eating as an experiment. I ask them to give me three weeks. The hope is by then, not only do they feel so much better—not only physically, but in the knowledge that they don’t have to be on medications for chronic diseases the rest of their lives after all! See Say No to Drugs by Saying Yes to More Plants. But also, their taste sensitivity has been boosted such that whole foods-as-grown regain their natural deliciousness. To see how a healthy diet can make you feel, check out the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine’s 21-Day Kickstart program at http://www.21daykickstart.org/.

For more context, check out my associated blog post: Want to be Healthier? Change your Taste Buds.

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