How’s your palate?

 

How’s your palate? 

This started as a random and cursory examination of the development of the palate. My not entirely serious inclination was that, far from the palate maturing from childhood into adulthood, the reverse was true. How else could disgusting food become not only tolerable but sought after?

As a child, I hated cabbage and Brussels sprouts among a myriad other foodstuffs. I wouldn’t say I was particularly picky, but I was polite – or cowardly - and would always answer, ‘It’s quite nice’ when pressed for my opinion of some delicacy or other, when what I actually meant was, ‘No, it’s horrible.’

 I disliked sherry in my twenties, and cheese and wine parties held no attraction. 

I began to like them as I grew older and now appreciate many of the things I did not care for when younger. Almost without exception, stronger flavours became more acceptable. Was my palate maturing?

Then I started to question why that should be. Taste develops early. A nine-week-old foetus has already acquired mouth and tongue and its first taste buds. The growing baby is exposed to what its mother consumes through the amniotic fluid and is born with an established sense of taste. Its preference, however, is for the sweetness of its mother’s milk.

People are born with around 9,000 taste buds which mainly cover the tongue, though there are some in the roof of the mouth and the back of the throat. The taste buds transmit messages to the brain. Different areas of the tongue are sensitive to five differing kinds of taste – sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Umami is often characterised as ‘savouriness’ which could be called ‘meaty’, or ‘complex’ or simply ‘delicious.’

An adult has 2,000 to 4,000 taste buds, each of which can regenerate every seven to fourteen days. That sounds most encouraging, but the ability to regenerate diminishes after the age of forty for women, and fifty for men. Existing taste buds start to atrophy and become less sensitive to salty and sweet foods. At the same time, the sense of smell, which is strongest between thirty and sixty, can become less acute, leading to a further sense that food doesn’t taste the way it used to.

It is therefore not surprising that many older people have little or no appetite, for if everything tastes like cardboard, there is no pleasure in eating.

However, this dismal picture does not seem to withstand scrutiny. Chefs, chocolatiers, cheesemakers, tea-tasters, oenophiles are often quite mature and rely on their years of experience to inform their opinions and decisions.

I must go and test my taste buds and see if they’re still working. 😇