How did you change your palate?

[mathiverse]

I would like to enjoy foods I currently consider bland and unappetizing. Is there a way to do this?

One man's bland and unappetizing is someone else's satisfying dish. Can I force this change within myself? Are the people who find a "bland dish" satisfying ignoring taste altogether and eating the dish for other reasons?

[sky]

Could you clarify your question? Perhaps with specific food examples?

[Sclass]

Usually the problem is the other way around. People with sensory issues cannot eat anything other than bland food.

I guess you can try starving yourself. Then anything tastes great.

[white belt]

I would like to enjoy foods I currently consider bland and unappetizing. Is there a way to do this?

One man's bland and unappetizing is someone else's satisfying dish. Can I force this change within myself? Are the people who find a "bland dish" satisfying ignoring taste altogether and eating the dish for other reasons?

I would say it depends on what you are used to eating. If you're used to eating highly palatable foods that are high in fat, sodium, and sugar (fast food), then you definitely can readjust your set point by eating a diet that's lower in fat, sodium, and sugar. A common strategy for athletes trying to lose weight is to eat less palatable foods that are higher in volume. After a few weeks your body will adapt. However, I'm not sure if this is sustainable for an entire lifetime, so you will have to find what works for you. In response to your 2nd question, people eat food for many reasons, not just because it tastes good. Good is also subjective.

[ertyu]

i have some experience with this. your palate is partly a habit, partly a matter of upregulation/habituation, and partly a matter of wiring.

if you water fast for a week, for instance, you will find that a piece of fruit tastes much more intensely sweet and flavorful than before you fasted. you will need a lot less salt for things to taste "salty" too. so one part of the equation is eating food you consider "bland" until your receptors downregulate and you learn to taste the flavor in it again.

the other part is accepting that take-out, spices, sauces, sweets, etc. are, to our natural palate, supernormal stimuli. I read the other day that fruit these days has been bred to be too sweet for zoo animals. well, are you not a zoo animal? you won't stop getting dopamine hits and wanting more once you downregulate your palate; it's kind of like you can't see enough picture-tits: we're biologically primed to want to see another titty picture even if we've seen 20 before, and we're biologically primed to think muffins are delicious and to want more muffins - or savory foods, if that's how you're wired - after the first "hit." So after you downregulate your palate, you need to protect it.

Psychologically, you could use reframing: why do you call food which isn't as spicy/salty/sugary "bland"? Why not call the mcd hamburger "oversalted" or "half-food, half industrial chemistry"? Feed your brain some propaganda: read "the pleasure trap" (or watch one of the youtube talks, i guess). Read "salt, sugar, fat: how the food giants hooked us" or "hooked" by michael moss and remind yourself to be conscious of the desire for supernormally flavored food. In the end, it's going to be a conscious process, and you're never going to be "done." You can habituate yourself to eat a new set of foods and to gradually reduce your liking for foods prepared the old way, but in the end, if you start eating supernormally flavored food again, you'll habituate to it again, and normal food will again seem "bland."

Good luck, i wish you success. this sounds simple but it's hard to execute and put in practice.

[Scott 2]

It helps to eliminate hyper palatable foods. Cheetos. Chicken nuggets. Oreos. Etc. Anything where a team of food scientists has spent decades refining the addictive formula.

Taste is a relative experience. There's usually a real food substitute that takes more work, but won't blow out your palate. If that's all your body knows, the food no longer seems bland.

[jacob]

I've done this a few times in my life. The change happens by itself over a few months after you change your diet. Just think of "taste" as a few variables for e.g. sweetness, saltiness, ... with a set point and a range. You can move both the set point and narrow or widen the range. Anything out of the range will either seem inedible or feel like a treat.

After moving out, I became a "loose" vegetarian (lacto-ovo). A few months later when I was home visiting my parents had made meat lasagna which used to be my favorite. It felt like eating little greasy rubber balls. After that it was clear I no longer appreciated/liked meat and I cut it out entirely.

Around the same time, I had some food allergy issues which I decided to fix by abstaining. (That has always been my fix rather than popping a pill.) I did not eat any candy or cake for two years at which point I decided to try a piece of cake at a seminar. It was unbelievably sweet, I mean sickeningly sweet. I recall Japanese researchers making the same comment about western style desserts. (They usually don't add sugar to their desserts.)

I have similar issues eating processed foods or other people's cooking because we rarely add extra salt to our cooking and everybody else does. As such, other people's food tastes quite salty and usually cause me to want to inhale half a gallon of water afterwards.

In grad school, I famously ate almost nothing but this: https://earlyretirementextreme.com/cook ... han-4.html I also read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluenza ... g_Epidemic which mentioned one of the authors eating nothing but rice three times a day for a month and getting used to it. Ditto here. As a side-effect, eating out after a seminar or visiting friends or family to eat something else became a culinary treat.

[IlliniDave]

Having just done this over the last 4-5 months, though not necessarily a switch to bland and unappetizing, but from bad choices to better choices, my body seems to respond on its own. By that I mean it didn't take long (a couple of weeks) for my 'cravings' to switch over to better choices. It could be I've fallen prey to self delusion, but it does make some sense that when presented with food that provides superior nutrition the body* will respond by encouraging its consumption. Regardless, a number of items that were very meh to me suddenly became appetizing--mainly plant foods. But I don't really do bland. There's a lot of benefit from phytonutrients in most herbs and spices (likely why they taste 'good' to us).

The processed food industry generates a lot of revenue, and with some of it they hire really smart people to engineer their offerings to be as addictive as possible through having learned how to hack and exploit our physiology. Putting that stuff aside is not easy. Probably best to follow the old Nike slogan--just do it.

*Might be my gut flora that runs the show to a good extent. After a few weeks I reached a point where I began craving my psyllium husk fiber supplement, despite it tasting like nothing with a hint of sawdust and providing no nutritional value to me. Some would argue that my gut bacteria are sending signals to my brain saying, "More, please," while at the same time serving me a side of postbiotic molecules that are beneficial to their distant cousins, my mitochondria.

[Bonde]

When I studied, I ate oats with cold water. I saw another guy eating it at campus and decided to try it out. Took a little adaption after skipping the milk and as i remember it didn't take that long.
Nowadays, I mostly heat it as I have access to a microwave at my work and I prefer it heated. It is nice with some fruit added but I don't need it. It is a bit boring without but goes down easily and is very filling which helps me loose weight.

[7Wannabe5]

When I was 45, I agreed to date a man who was 69, because he lied about his age on his dating app. So, that relatively early exposure to almost completely silver chest hair, some wrinkly skin on otherwise still kind of cute butt, etc. etc. served to adjust my palate to what future (now almost current!) me will most likely find on her plate.

OOPS! My bad, I misunderstood the topic. I've always loved sugar, but I've never liked salt. Nothing seems to change this preference.

[J_]

I changed my palate by realising how bad some food was for me. So I stopped using cheese or milk or yogurt.
Same for meat. But I must say it helped a lot that my wife is and good cook and she realised too what we both could win by overcoming a palate- change (and still eating very tasty): a much healthier life.
That change took place about twenty years ago and its results are proof that we took a good decision. We both are one out of five siblings, we are the only ones with not any illness to speak of during all those years.

[Western Red Cedar]

Lots of great advice here. I'll add that the first major change to my palate occurred when I moved to East Asia. I didn't have a high tolerance for spice, but ultimately acclimated to spicier dishes. In terms of appreciating "blander" dishes, I noticed a significant change in my palate after just a few short days at a silent meditation retreat in Thailand. I think this was a combination of refraining from food with any additives, fasting, meditation, and a very deliberate practice of mindful eating. The monks were vegetarian and only used herbs to flavor dishes. I notice a similar effect after backpacking for a couple of days. A simple bowl of oatmeal and a cup of herbal tea tastes amazing.

It is a bit like how people in NYC just get used to the sirens and the background noise. If you are regularly exposed to a stimulus your body will adjust.

+1 to the notion of focusing on healthier foods, eliminating processed foods, or simply limiting added salt/sugar/fat. After doing this for a couple weeks I find a lot of prepared foods way too salty - to the point that it is almost inedible.

[IlliniDave]

... I notice a similar effect after backpacking for a couple of days. A simple bowl of oatmeal and a cup of herbal tea tastes amazing...

This is a really good point. As I'm preparing for my four months at the hideout, the provisions I typically take are much different than what I normally eat at home (both my prior bad eating habits and current better eating habits). Of course I'm going to try to maintain my newer better habits this summer, but I often recall that just how awesome something very simple is after 12-16 hours outdoors. Locally harvested wild rice cooked in chicken broth is one of my favorite "meals" there. Of course, sadly, wild rice shows up on Dr Gundry's "do not eat" list which leaves me distraught. But the point is there's nothing like a lot of fresh air and activity to broaden ones palate.

[guitarplayer]

I would like to enjoy foods I currently consider bland and unappetizing. Is there a way to do this?

One man's bland and unappetizing is someone else's satisfying dish. Can I force this change within myself? Are the people who find a "bland dish" satisfying ignoring taste altogether and eating the dish for other reasons?

From my experience what people often describe as bland and unappetizing equals 'without salt and fat (and added sugar)'. Once I had it as a response to me saying that I use no salt or fat. The person responded 'so you eat bland food', I then said 'I use 30+ different spices and herbs instead'.

My view is it comes down to de-habituating the body. If you went cold turkey on sugar, salt and fat, after some time (it was about two week for me), you would start noticing tastes and textures.

Like, a cauliflower on its own would taste in a distinct way. And any other vegetable or fruit. Wheat has taste, flour even (though berries are better because of their texture and fiber).

You could couple this with intermittent fasting too.

[mathiverse]

@guitarplayer: Not quite. Think chicken thighs or a dish with ground beef. Salt added by me. No sugar though. Sometimes I will add spices, but the dish is still unappetizing (though the even-with-spices problem is probably due to my poor cooking skills).

[guitarplayer]

Hmm I think it is then perhaps worth to think about the context. So I would ask unappetizing in comparison to what?

Also, from the title of the thread I gather we are not talking about visually unappetizing.

[ertyu]

If you went cold turkey on sugar, salt and fat, after some time (it was about two week for me), you would start noticing tastes and textures.

Did you cut all 3 at once? What was your process

[guitarplayer]

I have to expand and mention this is to do with ADDED sugar, salt and fat. Think white/brown sugar, salt the powder thing and fat as in butter, oils etc. Someone could question my practice as e.g. I use peanut butter or tahini which is pretty close to refined oil, and eat raisins etc. which are pretty close to sugar. Celery for some reason tastes rather salty, I think it is the Sodium content. Also, some things are really difficult to find with no salt, e.g. peanut butter or tahini will come most often with at least some salt, lest one buys from an organic-eco-type outlet.

So for me it was a gradual process but mostly due to laziness as I had lots of cooked food available at work when I started it. I had to put the effort to start saying 'no thank you' and getting my own stuff, which was ultimately easy enough as the pantry had been full of cans of beans, veggies and fruit, or those salt free corn or rice crackers e.g.

I think quickest way to restart, if this suits temperament, is to do a fast and then start whatever target foods one wants to eat. Human body (and mind I should hope) is adaptable, this is our edge on this planet.

[ertyu]

lately, i've been running an experiment inspired by idave and his gut bugs who made him crave psyllum husk. the experiment goes as follows:

before the experiment, i took a multivitamin if id been eating crap -- the thinking being, this food contains 0.3 vitamins, i probably need some. the experiment: i decided to not take multivitamins with crap food. instead, i bite a bit off a big multivitamin tablet and take it with any meal the likes of which i want to consume more of - salad, lentils and bulgur, etc. the idea being, don't teach the body that the good stuff comes from the crap food, teach it that the good stuff comes with the lentils.

the experiment has been running for about a month now, with such consistency as i am capable of, but even with imperfect adherence, it's worked and i now find myself enjoying and wanting more of the "healthier" food. (one thing i did adhere to perfectly was not taking supplements along with less than healthy food the consumption of which id like to discourage).

i recommend this to anyone consciously aiming to change their palate.