ABSTRACT
Nutrition regulates the chemosenses and reciprocally, taste and smell greatly inuence food selection, satiety, dietary patterns, digestion, and nutrient intake. While the name “gustation” suggests the link between the sense of taste and food, the sense of olfaction is linked in a variety of complex ways. Approximately 90% of taste or avor is actually smell [1]. It is a nonpathological form of synesthesia, wherein orthonasal smell is perceived as aroma and retronasal smell, from the posterior of the mouth, through the oropharnyx, is construed as taste [2,3]. Olfaction begins exerting its effects when stimuli are afar and its potential roles in nutritional assessments are an area of ongoing research [4]. Attributes of nutritional metabolism and physiology are both enmeshed in this nexus and serve as a powerful milieu regulating disparate chemosensory forces that powerfully come together and impact one another, to yield relevant changes in the human sensory response, behavioral outcomes, and nally in the results of human health. This chapter explores how diminution and alteration in taste and smell inuence food selection and nutrient needs.
