First off, get your head out of the gutters. I’m talking about food. Specifically, why do we swallow food that’s bad for us?
Let’s say I’ve just had a nice meal. And I’m in the mood for dessert. Now, I’d be a healthier person if I skipped the chocolate cake entirely, but now and then you’ve just gotta enjoy.
Assuming I’m at home and there’s no one around to get grossed out, why would it be less satisfying to put a piece of cake in my mouth, chew it, enjoy the flavor, and then spit it out into a trash can. Next bite, repeat.
In theory, shouldn’t that be nearly as enjoyable as actually swallowing the stuff?
I haven’t tried it, but it seems like it wouldn’t be nearly as fun. I just can’t figure out why…
There is much more current research on this thann most people know. It is also a lot more complicated than you might guess. The entire process is called satiety which many people mistake as a word for a full stomach. In reality, it refers to a whole series of neurobiological processes involving the mouth, stomach, and the brain (in particular the hypothalamus). Various hormonal systems are involved as well.
Cool link, thanks. But if you’re satisfied (not hungry, anyway) before you eat the cake, then you’re not trying to feel full. That’s taken care of. You just want the taste of chocolate. Is that still releated?
Hmm… I never really thought about it. But as a WAG, the taste senses probably aren’t as ‘gee, that’s nice’, ‘eww, that’s unplesant’ as, say the sense of smell, sound, or sight are. That’s because it’s developed not so much as a way to tell what’s going on in the world around us, as to provide feedback information on a process that involved our insides - the activity of eating.
Something tasting good doesn’t mean anything in particular if we don’t eat it. Now, I realize that quite likely not everything about our sense of taste has been shaped by evolution, (and of course, the same conditions that obtained over the last evolutionarily significant period of time are not really applicable for most of us living in technologically developed countries.) But I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere in our minds, there wasn’t something similar to the following logic:
if it-tastes-good then:
urge-to-swallow
after swallowing, send pleasure response.
else
send displeasure response (don't put that in your mouth again!!)
urge-to-spit-out
end if
The idea being, the pleasure response isn’t so much from tasting something… (if it’s to be an effective mechanism towards storing up useable calories.) That’s more like a sense of ‘boy, this would be so good to swallow.’
Exactly how this would be accomplished on a neurological level, if it is, I don’t really know.
Nope. How do I know? I’ve tried it. Being a plump gal who enjoys food, I thought of that, too. Taste, chew, revel in it–but don’t swallow.
First, it’s really hard not to swallow food in your mouth.
Secondly, swallowing is just…part of the satisfaction in eating. I guess it might be like TMI ALERT! pulling out before you come, if you’re a guy. Still sort of good, but NOT what the experience should be like.
I do not speak from a position of authority on this, but most of the stuff that you enjoy eating is due to fairly primal responses. To a caveman facing a tough winter, fat and sugar would be attractive for the energy stores they would provide. In modern people, we manipulate our own primal urges by developing desserts that really push that button. But the swallowing part is necessary to get the benefit of that added energy, so is tied into the whole tasting experience–that’s the whole payoff.
That fits in with the evolutionary feedback theory actially. Like eating, having sex is an activity with a particular evolutionary connection (though not one that the people involved might want to fufill.) Thus, if you go through most of the motions but not the completion, it doesn’t ‘fufill its function’, and there might be some neurological way that the sense of proper completion is tied into fufilling all the pleasant stuff that came before. shrugs
Like eating, having sex is an activity with a particular evolutionary connection (though not one that the people involved might want to fufill.) Thus, if you go through most of the motions but not the completion, it doesn’t ‘fufill its function’, and there might be some neurological way that the sense of proper completion is tied into fufilling all the pleasant stuff that came before. shrugs