Health & Medicine
Your Sense of Taste Could Impact How Long You Live: Dangers of a Sweet Tooth
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: May 20, 2014 07:46 AM EDT
Taste buds may be to blame for how long you live. Scientists have discovered that how you sense certain foods may have a powerful role in whether or not you live a long and healthy life-at least when it comes to fruit flies.
Sense of taste can differ from individual to individual. If you have a sweet tooth or crave fatty foods, then you might just be impacting your health in significant ways if you're not careful with what you eat. In order to investigate this phenomenon a bit further, the researchers examined fruit flies.
The scientists either suppressed the insect's ability to taste its food, or kept the fruit fly's taste intact. The researchers found that bitter tastes could have negative impacts on lifespan, sweet tastes could have positive effects and the ability to taste water had the most significant impact; flies that couldn't taste water lived up to 43 percent longer than other flies. It's possible that the loss of taste may cause physiological changes to help the body adapt to the perception that it's not getting adequate nutrients.
In fact, it's possible that flies who lost their water taste attempted to compensate for a perceived water shortage by storing greater amounts of fat and then using these fat stores to produce water internally.
"These findings help us better understand the influence of sensory signals, which we now know not only tune an organism into its environment but also cause substantial changes in physiology that affect overall health and longevity," said Michael Waterson, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We need further studies to help us apply this knowledge to health in humans potentially through tailored diets favoring certain tastes or even pharmaceutical compounds that target taste inputs without diet alterations."
The findings reveal how sensory perception can impact a person's health. By knowing exactly how a stimulus can affect a person's health, we can make changes to encourage longevity in individuals.
The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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First Posted: May 20, 2014 07:46 AM EDT
Taste buds may be to blame for how long you live. Scientists have discovered that how you sense certain foods may have a powerful role in whether or not you live a long and healthy life-at least when it comes to fruit flies.
Sense of taste can differ from individual to individual. If you have a sweet tooth or crave fatty foods, then you might just be impacting your health in significant ways if you're not careful with what you eat. In order to investigate this phenomenon a bit further, the researchers examined fruit flies.
The scientists either suppressed the insect's ability to taste its food, or kept the fruit fly's taste intact. The researchers found that bitter tastes could have negative impacts on lifespan, sweet tastes could have positive effects and the ability to taste water had the most significant impact; flies that couldn't taste water lived up to 43 percent longer than other flies. It's possible that the loss of taste may cause physiological changes to help the body adapt to the perception that it's not getting adequate nutrients.
In fact, it's possible that flies who lost their water taste attempted to compensate for a perceived water shortage by storing greater amounts of fat and then using these fat stores to produce water internally.
"These findings help us better understand the influence of sensory signals, which we now know not only tune an organism into its environment but also cause substantial changes in physiology that affect overall health and longevity," said Michael Waterson, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We need further studies to help us apply this knowledge to health in humans potentially through tailored diets favoring certain tastes or even pharmaceutical compounds that target taste inputs without diet alterations."
The findings reveal how sensory perception can impact a person's health. By knowing exactly how a stimulus can affect a person's health, we can make changes to encourage longevity in individuals.
The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone