The sensation of flavor reflects the complex integration of aroma, taste, texture, and chemesthetic (oral and nasal irritation cues) from a food or food component. Flavor is a major determinant of food palatability—the extent to which a food is accepted or rejected—and can profoundly influence diet selection, nutrition, and health. Despite recent progress, gaps in knowledge still remain regarding how taste and flavor cues are detected at the periphery, conveyed by the brainstem to higher cortical levels, and then interpreted as a conscious sensation. Taste signals are also projected to central feeding centers where they can regulate hunger and fullness. Individual differences in sensory perceptions are also well known and can arise from genetic variation, environmental causes, or a variety of metabolic diseases, such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, and cancer. Genetic taste/smell variation could predispose individuals to these same diseases. Recent findings have opened new avenues of inquiry, suggesting that fatty acids and carbohydrates may provide nutrient-specific signals informing the gut and brain of the nature of the ingested nutrients. This Special Issue, Taste, Nutrition, and Health, presents original research communications and comprehensive reviews on topics of broad interest to researchers and educators in sensory science, nutrition, physiology, public health, and health care.

Approximately 380 million people worldwide are 60 years of age or older. This number is predicted to triple to more than 1 billion by 2025. Aging, Nutrition and Taste: Nutrition, Food Science and Culinary Perspectives for Aging Tastefully provides research, facts, theories, practical advice and recipes with full color photographs to feed the rapidly growing aging population healthfully. This book takes an integrated approach, utilizing nutrition, food science and the culinary arts. A significant number of aging adults may have taste and smell or chemosensory disorders and many may also be considered to be undernourished. While this can be partially attributed to the behavioral, physical and social changes that come with aging, the loss or decline in taste and smell may be at the root of other disorders. Aging adults may not know that these disorders exist nor what can be done to compensate. This text seeks to fill the knowledge gap. Aging, Nutrition and Taste: Nutrition, Food Science and Culinary Perspectives for Aging Tastefully examines aging from three perspectives: nutritional changes that affect health and well-being; food science applications that address age-specific chemosensory changes, compromised disease states and health, and culinary arts techniques that help make food more appealing to diminishing senses. Beyond scientific theory, readers will find practical tips and techniques, products, recipes, and menus to increase the desirability, consumption and gratification of healthy foods and beverages as people age.

Trying new foods is fun! Eating a variety of fruits, veggies, and other healthy selections helps you get the nutrients you need. How can you discover new foods you will like? And what are some different ways to prepare the new foods you find? This book introduces readers to a variety of tasty ingredients and exotic new foods. Try new recipes with hands-on activities and a fun facts section.

Salt (NaCl) is a key component of the human diet because it provides the sodium ion (Na+), an essential mineral for our body. Na+ regulates extracellular fluid volume and plays a key role in many physiological processes, such as the generation of nerve impulses. Na+ is lost continuously through the kidneys, intestine, and sweating. Thus, to maintain proper bodily balance, losses have to be balanced with foods containing this cation. The need for salt explains our ability to detect Na+ in foodstuffs: Na+ elicits a specific taste sensation called “salty”, and gustatory sensitivity to this cation is crucial for regulating its intake. Indeed, the widespread use of salt in food products for flavoring and to improve their palatability exploits our sense of taste for Na+. When consumed in excess, however, salt might be detrimental to health because it may determine an increase in blood pressure—a major risk factor for many cardiovascular diseases. Understanding how salt taste works and how it affects food preference and consumption is therefore of paramount importance for improving human nutrition. This book comprises cutting-edge research dealing with salt taste mechanisms relevant for nutrition and health.

The human tongue has somewhere up to eight thousand taste buds to inform us when something is sweet, salty, sour, or bitter—or as we usually think of it—delicious or revolting. Tastes differ from one region to the next, and no two people’s seem to be the same. But why is it that some people think maple syrup is too sweet, while others can’t get enough? What makes certain people love Roquefort cheese and others think it smells like feet? Why do some people think cilantro tastes like soap? John Prescott tackles this conundrum in Taste Matters, an absorbing exploration of why we eat and seek out the foods that we do. Prescott surveys the many factors that affect taste, including genetic inheritance, maternal diet, cultural traditions, and physiological influences. He also delves into what happens when we eat for pleasure instead of nutrition, paying particularly attention to affluent Western societies, where, he argues, people increasingly view food selection as a sensory or intellectual pleasure rather than a means of survival. As obesity and high blood pressure are on the rise along with a number of other health issues, changes in the modern diet are very much to blame, and Prescott seeks to answer the question of why and how our tastes often lead us to eat foods that are not the best for our health. Compelling and accessible, this timely book paves the way for a healthier and more sustainable understanding of taste.

Food consumption is a significant and complex social activity—and what a society chooses to feed its children reveals much about its tastes and ideas regarding health. In this groundbreaking historical work, Amy Bentley explores how the invention of commercial baby food shaped American notions of infancy and influenced the evolution of parental and pediatric care. Until the late nineteenth century, infants were almost exclusively fed breast milk. But over the course of a few short decades, Americans began feeding their babies formula and solid foods, frequently as early as a few weeks after birth. By the 1950s, commercial baby food had become emblematic of all things modern in postwar America. Little jars of baby food were thought to resolve a multitude of problems in the domestic sphere: they reduced parental anxieties about nutrition and health; they made caretakers feel empowered; and they offered women entering the workforce an irresistible convenience. But these baby food products laden with sugar, salt, and starch also became a gateway to the industrialized diet that blossomed during this period. Today, baby food continues to be shaped by medical, commercial, and parenting trends. Baby food producers now contend with health and nutrition problems as well as the rise of alternative food movements. All of this matters because, as the author suggests, it’s during infancy that American palates become acclimated to tastes and textures, including those of highly processed, minimally nutritious, and calorie-dense industrial food products.

'Life Kitchen is a celebration of food' Lauren, Sunderland 'The recipes are just really simple, really easy and delicious' Carolyn, Newcastle 'His book is better than a bunch of flowers because it's going to last forever' Gillian, Sunderland Ryan Riley was just eighteen years old when his mum, Krista, was diagnosed with cancer. He saw first-hand the effect of her treatment but one of the most difficult things he experienced was seeing her lose her ability to enjoy food. Two years after her diagnosis, Ryan's mother died from her illness. In a bid to discover whether there was a way to bring back the pleasure of food, Ryan created Life Kitchen in his mum's memory. It offers free classes to anyone affected by cancer treatment to cook recipes that are designed specifically to overpower the dulling effect of chemotherapy on the taste buds. In Life Kitchen, Ryan shares recipes for dishes that are quick, easy, and unbelievably delicious, whether you are going through cancer treatment or not. With ingenious combinations of ingredients, often using the fifth taste, umami, to heighten and amplify the flavours, this book is bursting with recipes that will reignite the joy of taste and flavour. Recipes include: Carbonara with peas & mint Parmesan cod with salt & vinegar cucumber Roasted harissa salmon with fennel salad Miso white chocolate with frozen berries With an introduction from UCL's taste and flavour expert Professor Barry Smith, this inspiring cookbook focusses on the simple, life-enriching pleasure of eating, for everyone living with cancer and their friends and family too. 'This book is a life changer: this is not gush, but a statement of fact' Nigella Lawson