Taste Perception
Animals, specifically humans, have five different types of tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. As animals have evolved, the tastes that provide the most energy (sugar and fats) are the most pleasant to eat while others, such as bitter, are not enjoyable. Water, while important for survival, has no taste. Fats, on the other hand, especially saturated fats, are thicker and rich and are thus considered more enjoyable to eat.
Read more about this topic: Food
Famous quotes containing the words taste and/or perception:
“Come, give thy soul a loose, and taste the pleasures of the poor.
Sometimes ‘tis grateful for the rich to try
A short vicissitude, and fit of poverty:
A savory dish, a homely treat,
Where all is plain, where all is neat,
Without the stately spacious room,
The Persian carpet, or the Tyrian loom,
Clear up the cloudy foreheads of the great.”
—Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65–8)
“The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)