ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with savoring the world: From taste in food to the taste for life. Food gives rise to ambivalent sentiments that vary according to different societies and competing visions of the world. Taste as the art of discerning flavors in relation to foods came to designate, by extension, the quality of one's perspective on the world, an appreciation of beauty demanding finesse, discrimination, and pleasure. Good food is at the heart of special occasions, which give free rein to gustatory pleasures to enhance the festive tone of the day. The chapter explains food as a total sensorial object, oriental cuisine, the tea ceremony, the cultural range of flavors, the development of taste, the taste of water and a vision or taste of the world. A taste for living governs one's taste for food. Hunger and satiety, or the appetite that regulates them, are never purely physiological or objectively measurable in calories.
