This week I want to  to raise awareness of two more of our senses –  taste and smell. I have put these together under ‘taste’ because they are very closely connected to one another. Often, we smell something in order to determine whether we will like it or not, whether the food is fresh, going off, or rotten. Babies are able to detect the presence of harmful chemicals in their mothers’ breast milk via the odour. A baby will delay feeding when a high alcohol content is detected in the breast milk, for example. Our taste is dulled by the absence of our ability to smell- as experienced when we suffer with a bad cold or blocked nose.

In short, our senses of smell and taste are natural first line defenses that help protect us against harmful food pathogens and poisonous chemicals. Our primitive ancestors used their sense of taste to help them to survive as hunters and gatherers. Bitter tastes were warning signs of poisons, while sweet tastes were nourishing. As babies, our first taste is sweet(breast milk) but then we are gradually weaned onto a variety of other flavours. This variety is important because the nutrition provided by sweet foods alone is not sufficient for our bodies once we are developed enough to walk on our own.

Look at your diet and note the proportion of taste that is sweet, salty, sour or bitter. Do you cook a wonderful meal only to overwhelm the taste of the meal with added salt, ketchup, gravy (more salt), or hot chilli pepper? Do you prepare a creatively colourful salad only to mask the taste with salad dressing? Are many of your main meals heavy on the taste of one ingredient thereby preventing you from being able to distinguish one type of food from another? What about your drinks? Are they mainly sweet tasting?

In order to balance your meals effectively, ensure that you can taste or smell  individual food items within the meal. Do not overcook food as this destroys some of its taste (as well as important vitamins). Do the blindfold test. Close your eyes and try to determine what your dish consists of. If you are only able to detect one taste, you are not getting the best out of your food selection!