Obesity and Taste Buds

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Did you know that obesity changes your taste buds?

Taste buds are the little bumps on your tongue that help you to decide how something tastes.

The average adult has about 10,000 taste buds, children have even more. These taste bud cells undergo continual turnover (even in adulthood), exhibiting an average life span of only a few weeks, tightly controlled by a balance of proliferation and cell death.

An obesity side effect, one you don’t hear too much about, is that it’s common for people’s sense of taste to dull as they gain weight. This is because inflammation, driven by obesity, upsets the balance of renewal and cell death, reducing the number of taste buds.

Obese people who experience a diminished sense of taste, who feel their food is just too bland, need stronger, more richly flavored food in to enjoy it. Taste buds get used to eating foods that are rich in sugar, salt or fat, and foods that are lower in those ingredients become less desirable. That means more sugar, salt and fat in one’s diet. And more calories. And even more weight gain.

Loss of taste is not permanent, however. Studies show that obese patients start noticing food tastes better and more intense a couple of months after starting to lose weight.