Re: Food Quality and Soil Health; Response

Robert Kluson (kluson@chuma.cas.usf.edu)
Sat, 22 Mar 1997 14:44:07 -0500 (EST)

I wanted to contribute a common observation which may relate to your
hypotheses on the human physiology of taste in response to Chris Alenson's
post of 3/20 re"Food Quality -- A Matter of Taste!" When I considered
your suggestion that taste depends on a healthy body, I remembered a
well-known example of how folks who give up smoking cigarettes always
experience a real return of their capacity to taste foods. Yes indeed,
it can be argued that taste is a 2 way interaction between the consumer
and the food.

It would be interesting to require "positive" controls in taste studies
with human participants in order to first assess their health and overall
capacity for discriminating taste. This may eliminate a confounding
variable which reduces an experiment's ability to detect taste
difference. Then make taste comparisons of food grown under different
production regimes, as well as control for other important variables such
as variety effects.

Rob Kluson