How you taste food rather than what you eat plays a far more important role in the health and length of life, a new study finds
A recent study conducted on fruit flies found that how a person tastes food has a greater impact on the health and longevity than what he eats. The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Michigan. Researchers noted that when fruit flies' tasting ability is suppressed, it can significantly increase or reduce the animal's lifespan along with promoting healthy aging.
Researchers noted that a bitter taste has a negative effect on the animal's lifespan while sweet taste has a positive effect. Researchers also found that the fruit flies that were not able to taste water were likely to live 43 percent longer than other flies.
"This brings us further understanding about how sensory perception affects health. It turns out that taste buds are doing more than we think," said senior author Scott Pletcher, in a press statement. "We know they're able to help us avoid or be attracted to certain foods but in fruit flies, it appears that taste may also have a very profound effect on the physiological state and healthy aging."
Pletchers said that the flies that can't taste water try to compensate for a perceived water shortage by storing greater amounts of fat and subsequently using these fat stores to produce water internally. He said that the loss of taste may trigger physiological changes to help the body adapt to the perception that it's not getting adequate nutrients.
"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," Waterson says. "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."
Previous studies have also highlighted the fact that sensory perception may influence health-related characteristics such as athletic performance, type II diabetes and aging.
The current study was funded by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
