Don't Make Every Meal Tasty

Taste Desensitisation & Long Term Diet Success

In these Friday emails, the aim is to be concise and practical. So, that is what we will do.

Today, I want to teach you about taste desensitisation and how this might impact your body composition outcomes.

One of the fundamental principles of the nervous system is adaptation to existing circumstances. If you walk into a smelly room, you eventually adapt to that and are no longer as disturbed by the smell. The same goes for loud noises, bright lights, and of course, flavours.

When we repeatedly eat a certain food, we may find ourselves desensitised to its flavour. What previously may have been delicious, strong, sweet, or sour, may no longer seem so. And if one adapts to a given flavour condition (e.g. consuming 3 sugars in each cup of tea for a week), it’s suddenly quite difficult to revert to the prior condition (e.g. no sugar).

How might this impact your dietary approach?

Often, when people diet, they try to make every meal as tasty as possible. This is why you see countless hacks and special recipes to make meals low calorie while still being delicious.

This is mostly positive, but it can unfortunately desensitise you to “normal” healthy meals. When you’re lathering everything in sugar free syrup, suddenly the natural sweetness of fruit seems blunted, as is the case with other flavour profiles.

My advice?

Don’t fear bland meals. Most foods taste good when cooked properly. If you try to go overboard on making every meal as flavoursome as it could possibly be (when trying to diet), especially “artificially” so, this may actually detract from your long term nutrition behaviours.

With that said, scroll down for Coach Dean's Low Calorie Snack Ideas that can easily slot into your diet!