Thursday 14 August 2008

The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!

The Series:
The Professor Diet - Eat as much Junk as you like
The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food
The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!

In my post, The Professor Diet Part 2: Healthy Junk Food I asked whether in the future we would be able to eat one food and have it taste like another. For example, we might eat what looks like a slice of chocolate cake from the Nintendo range of foods but is actually a healthy meal. By wearing the Wii ‘sense’ headset at the same time, we would fool our brains into thinking the healthy meal tasted like chocolate cake.

Something I failed to consider in that discussion was that when we eat food, the body does more than tell us how it tastes. Ironically, this point is clear from the article on obesity and artificial sweeteners I cited in my original The Professor Diet: Eat as Much Junk as you Like post. The article suggests that the taste of sweetness causes ‘digestive reflexes [to] gear up for that intake.’

So although I do still think this is an area that will be explored by science soon, it will not necessarily herald the new age in which the meddling of scientists with our food and taste does not have unintended consequences. Perhaps eventually they will become such skilled manipulators of the brain and food that we will be able to enjoy virtual junk food without any adverse affects on our bodies – but I cannot see that being anytime soon. For that to happen they would need to understand nutrition first, and as Natural Messiah points out here, there is some way to go on that score.

Thanks to Jimmy Moore from Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb for reminding me that what we taste affects our bodies too!

The Series:
The Professor Diet - Eat as much Junk as you like
The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food
The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!
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