How I tricked taste buds to reduce Daily sugar intake

Desensitize the sweet taste buds to cut sugar intake.

I believe that our sweet sense is tuned to our present sugar intake. By this, I mean if we eat a lot of sugar we become desensitized to it, thus we need more sugar to experience the same sensation. If it’s true and our taste buds can become desensitized then maybe this process can be reversed, and re-sensitized.

I managed to cut down on sugar intake by attempting to trick the sweet taste cells and make them more sensitive to sugar. I tried the trick firstly on my coffee drinks; I used to drink up to 3 cups each day with 2 teaspoons of sugar in every cup. I started by drinking one cup of coffee without any sugar at all. This tasted awful to me at first but I made sure I drank it. For my next coffee I had just half sugar, this tasted much better than the first cup but I still didn’t enjoy it that much. For my third cup of the day I had one full teaspoon of sugar, this time the drink tasted sweet enough for me to enjoy it. I now knew that I could drink all my cups of coffee with only one sugar rather than my normal 2 sugars.

This quick trick had helped me cut down from 2 sugars to one sugar within a few hours. Just cutting out that one sugar in 3 cups of coffee each day meant I had reduced my calorie intake by 336 calories each week with no real effort involved!

I started to think about how this trick could work with foods. I noticed that whenever I was really hungry I could eat foods I don’t normally enjoy yet they would taste ok or sometimes even nice. I thought that maybe the hunger somehow made my sweet tasting cells much more sensitive to sugar enabling me to detect smaller quantities in the foods making it taste better.

I started by making myself go hungry, I normally eat every 3-4 hours but this time I didn’t have anything to eat or drink (except for bottled water) for 7 hours. At this point I felt very hungry but I resisted the temptation to eat a quick, convenient meal. I took the time to prepare a healthy meal of fresh fish, half a plateful of different vegetables and a baked potato. I normally find it hard to eat vegetables so I ate the vegetables first, and I’m glad to say I actually enjoyed them.

This trick helped me improve my diet by gradually introducing healthier meals and snacks. The healthier meals also caused my calorie intake to drop substantially helping me to lose further weight without thinking about a strict diet. I still enjoy the occasional junk food but I always make sure I eat half a plateful of vegetables first! I now eat 4-5 portions of vegetables every day, except for the odd treat day.

I always stick to the principle of never eating junk food before healthy foods, I think the high sugar contained in many junk foods will cause the sweet taste cells to desensitize so healthy food ends up tasting awful as you cannot taste the small amount of sugar. Also, eating junk will fill you up somewhat before eating the healthy food so you may not feel like eating anything else at that stage.