LOSS OF TASTE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 185, 6 August 1936, Page 16

LOSS OF TASTE.

RESULT OF SMOKING. TOBACCO USERS' DULLED PALATES. EFFECT PASSES QUICKLY. (By a Spccial Correspondent.) WASHINGTON, June 30. Smokers never are likely to become culinary connoisseurs. They probably make less fussy husbands, so far as cooking is concerned. They can't distinguish fine distinctions in taste. In time, it is likely, one thing tastes just about like another. That is one of the sacrifices demanded by tobacco, according to the findings of Dr. J. Edward Rauth and James J. Sinnott, Catholic University psychologists. In some way the fumes of tobacco deaden the sensitivity of the so-called taste buds in the mouth and on the tongue. The effect takes place rapidly and disappears almost as rapidly when smoking is stopped.

The experiment was made on six students who swore off smoking for Lent. The ability to taste was measured by placing on the tongue accurately determined solutions of salt and of sugar in distilled water. After a point was reached at which the subject could taste nothing, the solution was progressively strengthened until taste was reported.

Within a few days after they stopped smoking they couki taste half as strong a solution of sugar as when they were using tobacco. During the former period candy might have been rather tasteless. Much of its sweetness would have been wasted on tliein. The effect with salt was not so striking, but at least 50 per cent stronger solution was needed to arouse the sense of taste in the smokers as in the non-smokers. Finds Effect Temporary. The threshhold of taste, says Dr. Rantli, rises very rapidly when a person starts to smoke. Several of the subjects were not able to keep their good resolutions and smoked a few cigarettes. The effect was apparent almost immediately as their taste sensitivity fell. It arose almost as rapidly when they stopped smoking again. Some years ago, Dr. Beuth measured the taste sensitivities of persons who never smoked and found that for every substance these were much more acute than those of smokers. In the present •experiment he found that the taste sense of those who swore off smoking soon became as acute as that of those whose taste buds never had been deadened by tobacco. Thus, he points out, the effect is temporary and reversible. By much the same technique, Dr. Ratith hopes to determine whether the sensory acuteness rises with age up to the time of adolesence. This claim has been made by psychologists, but with little experimental basis. It may be, Dr. Rauth holds, that the sensitivity itself does not increase, but that there is a notable increase in the individual's associations, so that a sense impression has more meaning and hence seems to be more acute. Children sometimes can be taught to like foods which arc repulsive to adults, but this is probably because the dislike is due to the associations rather than to the taste itself. In other words, one must lc-arn to taste. — N.A.N.A.