Taste Buds and Growing Older?
As the body ages, the enjoyment of food typically diminishes. Why is that?
As you grow older your sense gradually reduce, including your sense of taste and smell. At birth, you are born with roughly an average of 9000 taste buds. Starting around the age 40, the amount of taste buds decrease and the remaining ones shrink in their size. The distinction between flavors such as sweet, salty, sour, and bitter may begin to fade.
However, odor plays a much greater role in flavor than taste does, as such loss of taste may not be as noticeable at first. Sense of smell does not typically begin to diminish until past the age of 70, after which it significantly contributes to the loss of taste.
Ultimately this loss of taste and smell lead to the lack of enjoyment in eating food, leading to eating potentially becoming a chore for some individuals. There are steps one can take to prevent this: turn meal times into a social or entertaining event to renew interest, try a new mixture of stronger spices and flavors, or use color dishes or a variety of dishware to make the meal more appealing to the eyes.
Growing older is a fact of life and our bodies change. But we can still find ways to enjoy ourselves.
Read More:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/05/526750174/why-taste-buds-dull-as-we-age