Taste – Delight of food

Taste – Delight of food

Tongue & Taste – Taste – Delight of food

Food is very essential for energy for our existence. Tasty food tempts us to eat. Taste is one of the special senses / feelings just like vision , hearing, smell, touch or pain . Each and every one has their own favourite taste. Parrots like chillies, rabbits like carrots, dogs like bones, children like ice creams / chocolates / sweets, etc.

Taste will help us choose the right quality food. Of course, it can also become a culprit in making one obese

with high cholesterol with good eating. Taste differs from person to person and also time to time even in the same individual. Usually, some food tastes good and some others might be tasteless. Without taste, no one will have interest in food and it may lead to disgust for it. Taste improves the appetite and also protects us from most bitter / corrosive substances by creating aversions.

Normally, desires and aversions are developed with habit, i.e., what some find delicious might be not be so for others. Nowadays, evolution of cooking and revolution of catering technology has been creating / introducing many varieties of food items claiming to be mouthwatering, delicious. Everyone likes to have sweets (mostly), as sugar and carbohydrates are most essential foods. But we can see personalities who crave for salty / sour foods / bitter things too. These cravings sometimes make the persons aggressive too, for example – children become aggressive and stubborn in getting chocolates, likewise, a dog might become aggressive for getting meat even if it has got milk.

One will not feel any taste beyond the pharynx, even then those tempting temporary moments make everyone to have good intake. Even though appetite is entirely different from taste, for good intake, it seems to be essential.

Taste buds and receptors – Feeling of taste is sensed by taste buds / receptors present all over the mouth in a scattered manner (i.e., in tongue, walls of cheek, gums, back part of pharynx and soft palate). Taste buds are actually a cluster of epithelial cells present around a central pore in the papillae. In the tip of the each taste bud, there will be hair / receptors to sense the taste of the substance which comes in contact with it. But, they get destroyed often since they are exposed to different types of food substances which includes concentrated acids (juices), alkali (salts), corrosives (preservatives), etc., and their life is short i.e., maximum 2 weeks. Anyhow, they are constantly renewed.

The tongue has 4 types of papillae. They are scattered in different areas and engaged in identifying specific tastes. They are:

• Fungiform papillae – concentrated more in anterior one third of the tongue (identify sweet taste more quickly than others)
• Circumvallate papillae – concentrated more in posterior two third of the tongue (identify bitter taste more quickly than others)
• Foliate papillae – concentrated more in lateral borders of the tongue (identify sour / salt taste more quickly than others)
• Filiform papillae – have no taste buds.

Parts of the tongue which are sensitive to specific taste are:

• Sweet – tip of the tongue
• Sour – sides of the tongue
• Bitter – back part of the tongue

Chemically sensitive taste buds identify the particular taste of the food substance and trigger the particular area in brain (cerebral cortex) to have a pleasant or irritable feeling. These types of special sensations are carried to the brain by VII cranial nerve – facial nerve – chorda tympani branch (from cheek and anterior 2/3 of tongue) and IX cranial nerve – glossopharngeal nerve (from posterior 1/3 of tongue, gums and pharynx).

Variation in taste – Taste is a feeling (pleasant taste / unpleasant taste). It often varies with many factors. Taste is usually coordinated with olfaction / odours. So any dysfunction of it can also reflect in taste. While masticating, different food substances come in contact with taste receptors and can cause variation or confusion in taste discrimination. Also, due to overlapped fields in cerebral cortex (of brain), taste cannot be fixed as certain by individual, so perception and adaptation commonly varies from person to person and sometimes in the same individual. Taste may be enhanced by tongue movements, which increase the distribution of the substance over a greater number of taste buds. Taste may differ (lowered or altered) with

• Age
• Dentures
• Strong tooth paste, mouth fresheners, betel leaves, tobacco, cigarettes, etc.
• Poor oral hygience, tongue coating and lack of proper brushing
• Physiological changes (pregnancy – craves sour / salt – since body needs more salts)
• Pathological changes – Diseases (especially upper respiratory tract infection, viral flu, stomatitis, nerve leisons, hormonal / endocrine disorders, etc.)
  Drugs
• Treatments like chemotherpy, radiation therapy, etc.
• Olfaction disorders – nose polyp / block, sinusitis, post nasal drip, allergy , etc.
  Brain dysfunctions (in taste areas)

In addition environment, colour / attraction / proper serving of food can also add flavours Taste will also differ from previous substance tasted, for example

• After taking goose berry, water will taste sweet
• After taking gymnema (sakkarakolli) leaves, you cannot realise the sweetness of any sweet
• Water may taste bitter or sour after getting accustomed to extreme salty foods.These may be due to a suppressing or an opposite effect.

Taste reflexes and taste provoking smells – Normally, mouth-watering

(increased drooling, salivation) can be seen with delicious food intake (even with smell or sight too). As a reflex, concentrated sour taste will induce increased salivation instantly (to enhance fast intake of it as salts are vital for the body). Also most bitter taste too will induce increased salivation (to reduce the concentration of bitter substance / bitterness to comfort the tongue).

All the taste buds will usually respond to more than one taste. As food substances have different taste substances, every taste bud will initiate taste stimuli to the brain. But, when they get contact with specific taste buds, they will initiate enhanced (pleasant or unpleasant) stimuli to the brain. Also many of the flavours are recognised more with the sense of smell, i.e., if one holds his nose while eating / drinking, he could not be certain in telling the exact taste of it. Likewise, even the smell of coffee can induce the taste of coffee in brain, since flavour of the coffee (or food) will also be exhaled through the nose with our natural respiration.

Taste disorders – Even though taste is not only confined to the tongue, the tongue is always blamed for any taste difference or variations. Taste buds / receptors in the tongue are very much sensitive to temperature or disease, so any change in body with oral temperature or disease will have taste variations too. Taste disorders are named as:

• Ageusia – Absence of taste (complete loss of taste buds / nerve functions)
• Dysgeusia – Inappropriate / inaccurate taste – (malfunctions of nerves)
• Hypogeusia – diminished taste sense (partial loss of taste buds / nerve functions)
• Parageusia – irritating or unpleasant sense of taste

These terms can be used only with complaints or feelings of the sufferer. Even though taste function test – spatial test – can analyse the taste variation, it cannot be tested easily as done for other special senses (vision or hearing). Also there is no scale for intenstiy or concentration of taste. In addition, complicated design of taste testing will not provide accurate results.

for new hope

Dr. S. Chidambaranathan, BHMS, MD (Homeo)

Laxmi Homeo Clinic

24 E. New Mahalipatti Road

Madurai, TN 625 001

India

Tel:  +91-452-233-8833 | +91-984-319-1011 (Mob)

Fax: +91-452-233-0196

E-mail:  drcheena@yahoo.com

www.drcheena.com  / www.drcheena.in

(Disclaimer - The contents of this column are for informational purpose only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of healthcare professional for any health problem or medical condition.)

SOME RICE BASED FOOD FOR PEOPLE WITH CELIAC DISEASE CONTAIN RELEVANT AMOUNT OF ARSENIC

Rice is one of the few cereal grains consumed by people with celiac disease, as it does not contain gluten. However, it can have high concentrations of a toxic substance -- arsenic -- as revealed by the analyses of flour, cakes, bread, pasta and other foods made with rice, conducted by researchers from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Spain. The European Union is working to establish the maximum quantities of arsenic in these products.

Celiac disease affects almost 1% of the population of the western world, a group which cannot tolerate gluten and is thus obliged to consume products without it, such as rice. But this grain, depending on its origin, can also contain worrying levels of arsenic, a toxic and carcinogenic substance.

For the majority of consumers this does not pose any problem because they do not eat much rice every day, but this is not the case for celiac disease sufferers. Researchers from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (UMH) have analysed the presence of arsenic in flour, bread, sweets, pastas, beers and milk made with rice and intended for this particular group of the population.

The results of the analyses, presented in the journal 'Food Additives & Contaminants', warn that some of these products contain "important contents" of total arsenic (As-t, up to 120 µg/kg) and inorganic arsenic (As-i, up to 85.8 µg/kg). Total arsenic is the sum of the organic arsenic, which is combined with carbon, and inorganic arsenic, which reacts with other elements such as oxygen, chlorine and sulphur, and is more harmful.

With these figures the As-t and As-i contents only of rice used as a main ingredient -- leaving aside the other components of the food products -- were estimated and were found to be as high as 235 and 198 µg/kg, respectively..

Moreover, the daily intake of inorganic arsenic by celiac disease sufferers -- a consequence of their consumption of rice products -- was calculated as between 0.45 and 0.46 µg/kg (micrograms per kilogram of body weight) for women and men weighing 58 and 75 kg respectively. And, in the case of children (up to the age of five), these figures are even higher, ranging between 0.61 and 0.78 µg/kg, according to another study published in the 'Journal of Food Science'.

A panel of experts from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) of the EU established in 2009 that there is evidence to suggest that an intake range of 0.3 -- 8.0 µg/kg of body weight per day entails a risk of developing lung, skin or bladder cancer. The estimated intakes in the two studies therefore vary within this range.

As Ángel Carbonell, co-author of the studies, explains: "These figures show that we cannot exclude a risk to the health of people who consume these kinds of products," although he recognises an important point: "The European Union has not yet established legal limits for the maximum content of arsenic in rice and rice-based foods, though it is currently working on this."

Lack of legislation

The researchers' recommendation is clear: "What is needed is for health agencies to legislate to limit the levels of arsenic that cannot be exceeded in rice-based foods intended for consumers who suffer from celiac disease." Until now, celiac disease was diagnosed predominantly in children, but in recent years the profile has changed and one in every five people with the disease is over 65 years old.

Currently, every EU country is taking samples of these products, analysing them and conveying the results to the EFSA to draw up a database broad enough to be able to make decisions. The Spanish Agency for Consumer Affairs, Food Safety and Nutrition (AECOSAN) has recently sent the Spanish report, put together in collaboration with the researchers responsible for this study..

Another important recommendation they make is to include quality information on labels: "The inorganic arsenic content in every food product should be indicated, and the variety of rice used and its provenance should be identified clearly, because some are more recommended than others," affirms Sandra Munera, one of the authors.

Arsenic is naturally present in Earth's crust, but in some regions its abundance is greater than in others, and its concentration also increases with the use of pesticides. The substance then spreads through water to rice, one of the few plants that is cultivated when flooded.

One of the 'cleanest' types of rice is from the Doñana National Park, as the use of pesticides has not been permitted here and arsenic is not naturally present in large quantities. On the other hand, in countries like India and Bangladesh, where waters are contaminated with inorganic arsenic and rice constitutes a staple food for the population, the result is currently one of the largest mass poisonings in history.

WHY YOUR BRAIN MAKES YOU REACH FOR JUNK FOOD

Will that be a pizza for you or will you go for a salad? Choosing what you eat is not simply a matter of taste, conclude scientists in a new study at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre. As you glance over a menu or peruse the shelves in a supermarket, your brain is making decisions based more on a food's caloric content.

The study, published in Psychological Science, is based on brain scans of healthy participants who were asked to examine pictures of various foods. Participants rated which foods they would like to consume and were asked to estimate the calorie content of each food. Surprisingly, they were poor at accurately judging the number of calories in the various foods, but their choices and their willingness to pay still centered on those foods with higher caloric content.

"Earlier studies found that children and adults tend to choose high-calorie food" says Dr. Alain Dagher, neurologist at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital and lead author of the study. "The easy availability and low cost of high-calorie food has been blamed for the rise in obesity. Their consumption is largely governed by the anticipated effects of these foods, which are likely learned through experience. Our study sought to determine how people's awareness of caloric content influenced the brain areas known to be implicated in evaluating food options. We found that brain activity tracked the true caloric content of foods."

Decisions about food consumption and caloric density are linked to a part of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area that encodes the value of stimuli and predicts immediate consumption.

Understanding the reasons for people's food choices could help to control the factors that lead to obesity, a condition affecting 1 in 4 Canadian adults and 1 in 10 children. Obesity is linked to many health problems including high blood pressure, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Treating Canadians who have these problems costs billions of tax health dollars.

This work was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.