Taste

Taste is the ability to detect the flavour of substances such as food and minerals. Taste is affected by our ability to smell, if you lose your sense of smell, your ability to taste things almost disappears.  Taste is a survival mechanism, as it helps us avoid [in part] the ingestion of poisons, but we also seem programmed to enjoy certain tastes – thus it appears our tasting ‘software’ has an in-built capacity to help us enjoy life.

The receptor cells for taste in humans are found on the surface of the tongue, along the soft palate, and in the epithelium of the pharynx and epiglottis.  The information collected by the cells is transmitted to the brain, but again there it is processed – there is software to help us differentiate tastes and make judgements about what it is we are tasting whether we like it and what we should do about it.

I will not labour the point I am trying to make by going through all the facets of taste which mean that again we do not taste reality, but it is worth mentioning that even between humans taste sensations vary.

Observations

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• Chandogya Upanishad
• Prasna Upanishad