Taste & Health

It's Saturday, just dawn, and I'm already planning how to prepare what I hope to bring home from the Farmers' Market.

There's growing excitement about the role of our farmers' markets in our community's economic health. And yes, I get a rush from putting my values into the small actions of everyday life by supporting local businesses, but honestly, it's the taste that makes me excited to wake up on Saturday morning and plan my day around intensely flavorful, perfectly ripe foods-hallmarks of farmers' markets the world round.

Ten thousand taste buds scattered around the tongue, mouth, and throat work in chemical concert with the foods and drinks we consume to create the panoply of taste sensations we enjoy and for which we make intricate plans! Ahhh, the anticipation. Of course, the brain is where it's all put together and packaged with memories, emotions, and other sensations to create the full experience of taste.

While we have long understood that there are four major tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, and salt, most taste researchers today suggest a fifth taste called "umami", best described as savory, or meaty. Some researchers add the taste of fattiness, while others suggest that taste lies more on a spectrum, like colors, than in several distinct categories. Early theories of taste regions in the mouth (sweet on the tip of tongue, bitter on the sides, etc.) have been disproved and we know now that single taste buds contain 50-100 taste cells able to detect all flavors.

Taste plays a variety of roles in keeping us safe and healthy. We know that taste is one our first defenses against food poisoning. Our strong reaction to bitterness is a survival mechanism. Some taste buds are so far back in the throat that if strongly stimulated by bitterness they will make us gag-thus expelling substances that may be harmful or fatal.

Moreover, there's a whole world of wellness and vitality to which taste awakens us.

We know that consuming a variety of fresh foods is a key to nutritious eating, but that's not its only benefit. It's a rare Saturday that one of my colleagues at Renaissance doesn't return from the Farmers' Market chewing away on something the rest of us didn't even see, let alone venture eating. There's always something new to try at the Market. In addition to increased nutrition, this kind of taste adventurism is encouraged by researchers studying taste and ways to delay its decline as we age. (Taste cells are rejuvenated on a regular basis; approximately every 10 days our bodies replace a full set of them. This process begins to slow around age 45, which is why the sense of taste seems to diminish in older age.)

It might be the fresh taste of summer evoked by this year's snap peas or multi-colored carrots that gets us to the farmers' market, but once we're there we get the good tidings of social support-hand's down, (human) nature's most potent preventative health boost. Studies of farmers' markets in England are documenting that people who shop at farmers' markets have up to 10 times more conversations than people shopping in supermarkets. North American social scientists agree that this is exactly what we need more of in our Country to slow the rising rates of all sorts of rotten outcomes like depression, family problems, anxiety, and such.

That's just one more way that following our taste buds keeps us healthier. Conversations add years to lives. And the sense of taste, perhaps above all other senses, pairs beautifully with the power of relationships. Arguably the world's greatest expert on taste, Julie Child affirmed the relational power of taste. "It's fun", she said, "to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. That's what human life is all about-enjoying things". She would know; she lived to be 91.

It may be the musky taste of chantrelles, the umami flavor of Sockeye, or the tart bite of Gravensteins in the fall that has us seeking out local mushrooms, salmon, and apples. But in the course of finding those taste thrills right here, from local growers, fishers and foragers, we enhance the health of the entire local economy. In the world of food, research shows that money spent at local food businesses (like farmers' markets and restaurants that source their provisions locally) is reinvested in the local economy at 200% the rate of that spent at a supermarket or chain restaurant.

I don't know about you, but I get a charge from knowing that the pursuit of the perfect local pear for my favorite autumnal meal actually turns out to be healthy for our entire community. This is the kind of economic development I can understand. And support: anytime my taste buds can help the local economy, they're happy to oblige!