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The Possibility of a Vegan Taste Bud Shift
Many health enthusiasts are becoming aware of how many benefits a vegan/plant-based diet can provide. Whether you’re interested in improving your health with a plant-based diet, or want to protect animals and our climate, the numerous health benefits switching to a vegan diet are many, and have been thoroughly collated by Rachel Krantz. But could a plant-based diet be able to improve your ability to taste?
An omnivorous diet creates and exacerbates inflammation [1, 2], an immune response that can circulate through the body and be destructive when intense or prolonged. Chemically reproducing inflammation with the relevant biomolecules (i.e. IFNs, TNFs and IL-1β) actually shortens the lifespan of isolated taste bud cells [3, 4]. Chewing “omnivorous food” hasn’t been shown to instantaneously generate an inflamed tongue, but sticking to an omnivorous diet perpetuates inflammation [1] and may lower ability to taste.
Being overweight or obese is accompanied with inflammation, in part as a response to the leak of fats from “stuffed” fat storage cells into the bloodstream [5]. It is thought that this obesity-induced inflammation (i.e. elevated TNFα, IL-6 and CCL2) is responsible for decreasing the number and lifespan of taste bud cells in obese mice [6]. Intuitively, fewer taste bud cells [6], along with other phenomena in the nervous system of obese…
