Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

How can we overcome our built-in hunger drives for salt, sugar, and fat? We now have scientific evidence to back up the claim that if you go a few weeks cutting down on junk food and animal products, your tastes start to change. We now think humans may actually taste fat, just like we taste sweet, sour, salty. And, people on low-fat diets start liking low-fat foods more, and high-fat foods less.

Our tongues may actually become more sensitive to fat. And the more sensitive our tongue becomes, the less butter, meat, dairy, and eggs we eat. Whereas a blunted taste for fat, if we pile too much of it in our face, is associated with eating more calories, more fat, more dairy, meat, and eggs, and being fatter ourselves. And, this change in sensation, this numbing of our fat sensation, can happen after just a few weeks.

Put people on a low-salt diet, and over the weeks, they like the taste of salt-free soup more and more, and the taste of salty soup less and less. Your tastes physically change. If you let them salt their own soup to taste, they add less and less, the longer on the low-sodium diet. Tastes just as salty, with half the salt. A control group liked lots of salt in their soup, but for those who’d been on salt-restricted diets, regularly salted foods taste way too salty, and they actually preferred soup with less.

People “should be assured that their diet gradually may become more acceptable as their taste for salt diminishes.” The longer we eat healthier foods, the better they taste.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.