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Brix Book - Age Vs. Taste |
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Page 31 of 35
SOME NOTES ON AGE AND TASTE ABILITY
Babies are born with the ability to detect four tastes (sweet, sour, salty, and bitter). Those four, along with the sense of smell, are provided to help guide our young toward the proper food needed to develop to maturity (and to remain healthy).
Sadly, many babies are sent on a lifetime journey of confusion. The child at the table is often told, "eat it, it's good for you." Young as he is, the child knows the food tastes bad (or has no taste), but must eat it to avoid starving. Oft times sympathetic (and loving) parents add butter, sugar, or salt to induce the child to eat what the child’s senses clearly tell them isn’t proper food.
Far too often the child will mature into an adult with a mangled sense of taste molded to such as sugar, salt, and artificial flavors. Frequently, unless intervention occurs, the now-grown child will, in turn, ignorantly distort the instinctive taste abilities of their own children. |
Food manufacturers are driven by the profit motive. They will continue to seek cheaper ways to produce "food." This generally means they will use lower quality flavorless food and try to improve its non-flavor with those sad low-cost adulterants: sugar, salt, and artificial flavors. Older readers may well remember the WWII phrase ersatz food. The term referred to the attempts by German chemists to create "food" from industrial byproducts such as sawdust. These created products were destined for ordinary people in the occupied countries. Meanwhile, the higher quality farm output in those same countries was earmarked for Nazi consumption.
Medical texts claim that taste ability declines as people age. That may be true in an absolute sense, but almost all older people report that HIGH BRIX food tastes wonderful. Possibly, the reported loss of taste only applies to artificial flavors and other adulterants. |
My late wife was asked to participate in a number of studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health. Among the more interesting were a series of "scratch & sniff" evaluations, some at Bethesda MD and some via mail at home. When I interviewed the doctors, they made a convincing case that they could evaluate one's health *or* non-health by how well they could smell. They were particularly interested when my wife couldn't smell something that she was sure she once could smell. I sometimes think back to her problems when I'm holding and smelling a particularly delectable peach. Obviously, the thrill that runs through my body is not triggered similarly by those sad 10 brix imitation peaches in the store. |
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