How taste of something, correlate with the energy obtained from them?

533 views

Like are sucrose/glucose are sweet because we get more energy from them, so our brains gets modded like more energy = more sweet? (I don’t know how to word this exactly) Does the taste we taste depends upon the energy that product contains?

In: Biology

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Not directly, taste buds are little sensors that detect certain molecules they have developed through evolution because the people who ate more sugar were more likely to have children. As for the sensation of sweet as an experience is still a mystery because we still don’t understand much about consciousness.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Sucrose/glucose are not sweet because we get more energy. We get the least energy from carbohydrates and proteins, at about 4 calories each, while fats give us about 9 calories. We have evolved to enjoy food (ie: enjoy the taste and texture and smell) so we don’t starve. The flavor has zero direct bearing on how many calories something contains.

See artificial sweeteners, how little sugar it takes to make something mostly fat/protein taste sweet.

Our love of meat actually is considered one of the defining traits that led to our bigger brains–excess energy from fat and high quality protein (protein is harder to come and absorb from plants).

Anonymous 0 Comments

To an extent, yes. Our brains are wired to maximize caloric intake (that’s why we love fat and proteins like meat so much) and stuff like salt that’s not too easy to come by naturally. Nowadays, we can all eat way too much of that stuff, but for most of human history, those high-value food items were rare and heavily sought after – that’s why we developed that taste.