[This post was translated by Pascal Hideki Hamonic from the Japanese original post "味覚の認識論" written by Michinori Fukushima]
The sense of taste is particularly a virtual sense. What the body feels like eating is perceived as delicious?
Strangely enough, oftentimes you would find yourself eating up a dish that you dislike, or find yourself eating repeatedly the same dish that you dislike. Sometimes, even if you think that a particular dish is good, you won't eat it twice.
"The sense of taste is something unique. First, your tongue will feel it as quite refreshing. Then, your tongue will deeply feel the light sweetness."
This quote from the famous manga "Oishinbo" illustrates one wonder of taste. (By the way, hotness and "mattari" are tactile perception, they are not exactly savors.)
Now, let's say that your tongue is paralyzed and you feel nothing. What would happen? Below is an excerpt from a report.
"Dysgeusia, the disorder of taste is very tough. Whatever you eat, you feel like chewing sand. It's as if someone was forcing you to eat rubber or clay. In some cases, you even vomit what you have just ingested. You may become hypersensitive to sweetness.
Healthy individuals are certainly unable to understand that situation."
The world is completely changed. Completely transformed.
Tastiness, light sweetness do not exist anymore. They become completely virtual, only entities produced by your brain.
From now own, I'd like to express my personal opinion. Transmitted from the sensory system of the tongue, the taste of something may be perceived as lightly sweet and therefore interpreted as good or it may be perceived as disgusting. But I think that those perceptions are based on a mechanism related to Evolution.
Originally, the five senses of taste were all informational inputs and in order to determine whether or not something was positive or favorable for the human body and brain, the question was not "Is it delicious?" but "Is it nutritious?". Also "Is it necessary for my brain?", "Is it poisonous?" were other such questions.
That means that even if that tastes terrible at the beginning, as long as it's nutritious, you will find it eventually very tasty. That's my point.
In other words, let's say that you wanna sell something that tastes terrible. Well, you just need to put on top of it nutritious elements and ultimately people will find it tasty and buy it.
That's possible. Why not?
To test the idea explained above, I tried and had some of Aojiru....It tasted terrible...orz
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