ABSTRACT
People do not eat nutrition nor do they eat nutrients. People eat food but not just any food. They eat food that tastes good to them. Yet, what tastes good varies across time and space and, of course, has serious implications for health. Although nutrition is a young science, barely a century old, the impact of chemosenses on health dates to Galen’s observations on diet and likely well before that. But the relationship between chemosenses and health has resonated today as our population ages, drugs change perceptions of taste and flavor, and global obesity becomes a worrying trend. Yet, as a scientific field, taste is understudied, and its effect on health is only now becoming an important field of medical and scientific inquiry, as I am sure others in this volume elucidate much more elegantly.
