Life is adaptable. It has to be in order to survive. Our planet is subject to change. Over its lifespan climate, environment, what will grow and what will not changes. The life that exists upon it has to adapt to these changes. One of the most obvious aspects of this is what we eat in order to survive. For most animals, this is fairly straightforward. It is partly genetic and partly learned. The genetic part is the digestive system of course, but it is also smell, taste, and hunger. As available energy drops, so hunger increases. This hunger is satisfied by eating, and what smells and tastes good differs from creature to creature. The smell of cattle will smell of good food to tiger cubs. Sinking their teeth into the hide of a deer and the taste of fresh blood will feel and taste good to them. For herbivores, it is the smell and taste of fruits and vegetables that attract them. The mechanics of hunting and foraging for food is often learned from parents, but taste and smell are genetic. But what happens when a certain food source becomes scarce or dies out? If an animal couldn’t adapt and find new sustenance it would die out. So what happens in this eventuality?
As hunger increases so does desperation. The hungrier an animal or human becomes, the more they will be inclined to eat whatever is available. This is how people who are starving will eat things we might ordinarily never consider eating, like grass, leaves, insects or rodents. Animals will generally stick to a certain type of food, but if that is no longer available and hunger increases, they will (through desperation) try alternative ways of sustaining themselves. When they eat something new, one of two things will happen. Either that thing will make them ill, or it will have some nutritional value in which case they will start to feel better. If the new food actually makes them feel better, they will learn from this experience and will continue to consume this new food and will start to adapt to it. In this way, life adapts and continues. So we have this simple mechanism; if we consume something and it makes us feel good, we will start to instinctively seek it out. This actually forms part of natural selection. Did you know that bees instinctively favour plants that contain caffeine? Bees learn that obtaining pollen from certain flowers leaves them feeling more alert, so over time they favour those plants. Those plants then have increased pollination and thrive.
In this way our tastes can actually adapt. Think about an ‘acquired taste’. Taste is a chemical reaction between what is in your mouth and receptors on your tongue. It doesn’t change because it is an objective chemical process. But what does change is how your brain interprets the sensation. If you eat something unfamiliar you may think it doesn’t taste good, but if you persevere, if it assuages your hunger and doesn’t make you feel ill, you will eventually come to like it. This mechanism doesn’t just apply to taste, but to experience. One of the most interesting aspect of this is snus, or dipping tobacco. This is a very fine, moist tobacco that is put between the gum and the cheek and nicotine is absorbed. It also causes mouth cancer and over the years can actually burn its way right through the cheek. What raises the question, if it is burning through the skin doesn’t it hurt? The answer is yes, it stings. But it also provides a hefty dose of nicotine, which relieves the withdrawal which is caused when the previous dose of nicotine wears off, leaving the user feeling more relaxed and content and alert than they were before they had the tobacco in their mouth. The brain reinterprets the stinging in light of the whole experience and adapts to it; a stinging in the mouth is usually considered bad, but this stinging has the result of leaving the user feeling far better. So the stinging is there, but the brain reinterests it as good thing. It starts to feel piquant, tingling, good.
