Taste and obesity

Understanding the links between taste perception and obesity would help authorities cope with obesity, which diminishes the health of human populations. This has been highlighted by a study of the impact of programs intended to educate obese adolescents about healthy diets (Pasquet et al., 2007)1. We present and discuss the results of this study in this chapter. In order to analyze the relationships between taste perceptions and obesity, we will (I) present the main aspects of taste perception: psychophysical (mostly nerve impulses) and psychocultural dimensions, (II) specifically describe responses to sugars and fats, (III) explore the ethnic variability of taste responses, (IV) assess psychocultural dimensions of taste perception which would promote a loss of weight, and (V) show how psychophysical taste perceptions could interfere with the weight loss program throughout the psychocultural dimension.