Ginger Makela

From the article: "The tongue and the mouth, assisted by the nose, are considered the body’s primary defense against poison. They are designed to ensure that nutritious substances are ingested and harmful substances rejected. For this reason, says Hildegarde Heymann, another sensory scientist at UC Davis, the human body can taste faster than it can touch, see, or hear. The body can detect taste in as little as 1.5 thousandths of a second, compared with 2.4 thousandths of a second for touch, and a sluggish 1.3 hundredths of a second for hearing and vision." - Ginger Makela via Bookmarklet

I wonder if that's a survival thing: ingesting something toxic is much more immediately harmful than life-threatening things found via other senses. I liked this: "If understanding your genome allows chefs to understand, in advance, your possible likes and dislikes, that would allow them to personalize the experience even more. There’s a greater chance of your saying, ‘That was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I feel like the chef was cooking just for me.’” - Mark Trapp

What I find interesting is that the primary purpose of the senses is to avoid bad instead of finding good. If that is true, we should be in much more agreement about what is bad, and much less than what is good. It also reminds me about how FM radio stations are notoriously avoid a "bad" song like the plague for fear of losing a listener and instead fill the air with blandness. - RAPatton

Sadly I thought this article was about fashion taste - as in the shirts in the pictures above - Jason Kaneshiro

@Mark Trapp: "I wonder if that's a survival thing: ingesting something toxic is much more immediately harmful than life-threatening things found via other senses." I don't know about that Mark. A tiger on your ass is a lot more immediately harmful than eating a bad mango. - Dread Pirate PJ via NoiseRiver

RAP, the senses tuned to avoiding bad isn't so much about a debate among foodies, but according to Dr. Oz relates to man's evolution and trying to avoid poisons, which (fortunately) taste "bad" to us in many cases and so man would avoid such foraged fare. [He brought this up in context of if veggies are so good for us, why is it so hard to get kids to eat them and they typically balk that they're "yucky" etc. Kids are much more sensitive to taste, and the bitter is not something they want; sweet=safe.] - Casey

The article didn't cover how taste changes over time -- when you are young, you are more averse to bitter, which is why many people don't like vegetables, coffee, wine, dark chocolate etc. until they are older. It seems like companies should take that into account before trying to make meals based on your DNA. Also, I'd be a little wary of novel molecules. The track record with MSG, aspartame, saccharine, cyclamate, and dyes hasn't been perfect. I'll let someone else eat the candy-flavored broccoli :-) - Karim

@Ginger - I highly recommend reading http://scienceblogs.com/cortex... and the accompanying book "Proust was a neuoroscientiest" - Shakeel Mahate