Sweets

Sweets. I've come to conclude, are the ultimate feel-good, feel-bad food, and as such they're as beguiling as they're exasperating. They inspire stories as rich and deep as an intoxicating love affair. A better understanding of this relationship provides some insight into the meaning we instill in our food and the reasons why we consume it the way we do; it uncovers our pasts, our unspoken beliefs, fears, and desires. It sheds light on the way we view others.

--an excerpt from The Taste of Sweet --our complicated love affair with our favorite treats by Joanne Chen

Exaggeration?? I think not.

What do you get out of your food

...When we are talking about the taste of something, however, we're usually talking about flavor. Flavor is many tastes combined, embellished, and fine-tuned with aroma and texture. It's not merely, say, the spare sensation of sugar or vinegar on the tongue, but the full-blast gustatory experience of lemon pound cake, apple pie, or candied oranges. It's the sense of taste made gorgeous with the senses of smell and touch.

A person's gustatory world becomes whole thanks to a vast network of nerves and receptors on the tongue, in the mouth, up the nose, and in the brain, all assiduously doing their part. When one is not up to snuff, the brightness of a food's flavor dims a little....

A piece of cake, once in the mouth, is a moving target, causing conditions that are difficult to re-create in the lab and making taste especially tricky for scientists to study. The temperature of the food rises or falls until it finds its equilibrium in your warm mouth; its viscosity changes. As you chew, you're not only breaking down the food but also stirring up the air around it; aromatic components rise up as and solids move toward the back of the tongue and are eventually swallowed. The back of the nose catches a whiff, a process known as retronasal olfaction. When it's blocked by congestion from a cold, the flavor of the food becomes muffled and the pleasure is lost....

The Taste of Sweet by Joanne Chen


Are you utilizing all of your gifts to get the most satisfaction in the least amount of calories???