#199 Food Tastes Better Sitting Down

The Senses

We have more senses than we think. The vestibular sense is responsible for balance, posture and spatial orientation. It fades as we age. It means we fall more often but also that our food tastes better when we sit down.

A Five-Minute Read

We often think that we only have five senses: sight; hearing; touch; smell and taste. Our vestibular sense is based in our inner ear. In a labyrinth of tubes. Liquids within the tubes move as we move. Hairs within the labyrinth allow us to sense our orientation from that movement. That information is combined with our vision and signals from our muscles and joints. This allows us to maintain our spatial orientation. It allows us to maintain our balance.

Older Falls

As we age our vestibular senses lose sensitivity. The hairs within the labyrinth die just like the hairs within out ears. It makes us more prone to falls. Loss of balance is part of our increasing frailty which typically starts in our eighties. Between 65 and 70 only 13% of people reported a sense of imbalance in one study. This rose to 46% in those over 85. Not only do we suffer a sense of imbalance more often, but it takes longer to recover than in a younger person.

Of course there are many other reasons why we fall when we get older. If we do not exercise, our muscle strength declines. We are less able to make all the minute changes that maintain our balance. Many medications can influence our sense of balance.

Fortunately exercise and particularly balance exercises have been shown to delay the onset. Much can be done to “tidy up” living spaces. This reduces the chance of a trip or a slip on a wet floor. Older men tend to fall when engaging in inappropriate DIY.

Stress and Standing

Standing is hard work at any age. It engages many parts of the body beyond the vestibular labyrinth. We have thousands of nerves in the soles of our feet. These allow us to detect minute changes in our weight distribution. (They too fade with age). This allows us to realign our body continuously. Standing means that the force of gravity pushes blood to the lower parts of the body. This causes the heart to work harder to pump blood back up, accelerating our heart rate. This leads to increased concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol. All of this has been shown to create physical stress.

Stress and Taste

There are multiple studies showing that the stress reduces gustatory sensitivity. In loud noise we are less able to detect the level of alcohol in our drinks. Our food tastes bland when flying partly because of the background noise level. In a series of experiments the impact of standing on the tastiness of food was assessed.

In the first study respondents assessed the tastiness of a pita chip. Half were standing the others seated in a padded chair. Those standing gave identical chips a less favourable rating. In a second study the pita chips were replaced by a chocolate brownie. The result was the same, standing reduced the perceived tastiness.

The mechanism was explored in a third study. In this case a batch of brownies was prepared with excess salt. They did not taste good. Those standing found the salted brownies more pleasant than those seated. Their sense of taste had been suppressed. The impact of the standing stress on taste was demonstrated. Stress was then increased by having respondents hold a carrier bag full of groceries. They were asked envisage that they were tasting free samples whilst shopping in a supermarket. Standing (or sitting) whilst holding the bag reduced taste sensitivity even further.

Loss of taste is a major concern for people over 85. It can cause food to taste bland and destroys the enjoyment of eating. This can cause nutrition problems. There are many causes including loss of taste buds. It can also, it seems, be caused by standing, especially as you get older.

There are some potential advantages. According to the authors, we should take unpleasantly tasting medicine whilst standing. Children who will not eat broccoli might be less adamant if eating standing up. It is not much of a compensation.

This study confirms again that our senses and mind do not operate independently.

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