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When consulting people on weight loss, I always stress one important fact: The single biggest factor in achieving success is HABIT. When one is in the habit of cooking healthy meals and participating in regular exercise, the result will always be positive weight management. As we begin to assess the barriers to these healthy habits, many people often report having difficulties with food cravings. Therefore, one would be remiss in not addressing our taste buds prior to starting any weight loss program.
The average adult tongue has anywhere between 2,000 to 10,000 individual taste buds! A higher number of taste buds results in a “refined palate” with the ability to pick up on subtle flavors in foods. However, it’s the taste bud subtype that has the ability to influence the foods we crave. There are 5 different types of taste buds: sweet, salty, sour, bitter & savoury. A common myth we hear is there are different areas of our tongue which hold only one type of taste bud (i.e. sweet buds are at the tip, sour buds are on the sides, and bitter buds are at the back). The fact is we actually have a variation of every type of taste bud throughout the surface of our tongue. A person with a higher number of sweet taste buds on their tongue may find they enjoy sugary foods whereas a high ratio of salty taste buds resulting in a desire for saltier snacks. When making dietary changes, this is an important aspect of our physiology to consider.
Our taste buds are just like every other cell in our body in that they are constantly being regenerated. The average life cycle of a taste bud is roughly 10-14 days. This means that every two weeks, our tongue has new taste buds. Furthermore, the types of foods we eat have a direct result on the taste buds we create. An individual that eats a lot of sugar & candy will develop more sweet taste buds, whereas a person eating a lot of fast food will develop more salty taste buds. In contrast, a person that eats a healthy bland diet, will produce less of these types of buds and ultimately have less cravings for sweet or salty foods. When starting a new weight loss plan, it’s important to consider a taste bud training program. The definition of a boot camp is “a short, intensive, and rigorous course of training”. We can apply this training philosophy to rebuilding our taste buds, where the meal = the workout and the food = the exercises. Knowing that we create new taste buds every 2 weeks, this provides a perfect time frame for a “taste bud boot camp”. During this period, a specific food plan is implemented where the end goal is to shift the types of taste buds that dominate our tongue. In doing so, it sets one up for adhering to a long term diet plan and thus maintaining healthy HABITS!