avatarDavid Hip

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A Myth About Tasting

You’ve probably seen a diagram about taste zones on your tongue. Something like this

You were taught about regions on your tongue responsible for different tastes — bitter in the back, sweet at the tip.

But this is a myth. It stems from a mistranslation of research in the 1900s. There are no distinct taste zones.

In reality, all the tongue tastes all the flavors with different sensitivity. The reality is more complicated than taste zones: factors like smell, texture, temperature, and individual variation influence how we perceive taste, not locations.

Why am I telling you this?

There is an important lesson in this, and it’s not only that new research tends to disprove what we’ve thought we knew and is a never-ending journey for more knowledge.

It’s that the reality-models we have influence how and what we experience. Maybe you took the myth of distinct taste zones and noticed pronounced flavors in certain regions. There might be a host of models you have, which turn out to be wrong but still have a concrete influence on how you perceive the world.

The example of different taste zones is a relatively harmless one, but there might be others, which have a more profound influence on your experience (like that you’re a small self separated from the rest of the world). A whole world might be unrecognized by you, while you cling to illusions, which can hurt or make you suffer.

This speaks to the importance of close, attentive experience. Because when we only superficially engage with the world, we often take up models others gave us, together with the underlying myths. But the moment we pause and pay close attention to what we perceive, right now, those prior experiences and theories lose their grip. We can start to engage with what is happening right now.

I have talked about this concerning the following senses:

Listening to beautiful music, nature, and other people.

Seeing the wonders the world has to offer you.

Smelling the impermanence of the world around.

But tasting and touching are no exception to this. They let you be in the world by forming deeper connections withing it and disengaging with what you thought you knew.

So this is a prompt to more fully inhabit a multi-sensory, enriched, flavorful, and surprising world:

  1. Eat slowly. Savor the experience you get from chewing 4 times slower than you normally would. Smile in between bites and see whether this changes something.
  2. Touch objects you have never touched before. Interact with them in ways you normally wouldn’t. Kick something (with caution) and notice how that feels.
  3. Ask yourself: “What tastes like home”, “What is a texture I have never touched?”
  4. Find out what tastes fade into while you wait between bites.
  5. Pay close attention to the texture of food and the slight variations you encounter.
  6. Keep a diary of new, pleasant, unexpected flavors and textures (and when you’re at it also sounds and scents).
  7. Notice surfaces with different temperatures and how this changes with time.

Or engage in your own little experiment. Play. And then let me know what you found.

Have a tasty day,

David Hip

Mindfulness
Meditation
Philosophy
Mental Health
Life
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