Influence of Sensation and Liking on Eating and Drinking

Flavor is an integrated unified perceptual phenomenon that arises from inputs across multiple sensory modalities, including taste, smell, chemical touch (chemesthesis), and oral somatosensation. The flavor of foods influences the decisions we make about what foods to eat, and in an environment with abundant options, this primarily occurs by causing us to reject certain foods because we do not like the sensations they evoke. In general, bitter sensations tend to be disliked, while sweet sensations are liked; data on other taste qualities are less clear. Notably, there are substantial differences between people, both in their sensory and affective responses, and learning and exposure can decouple sensations from innate aversive responses. Further, dynamic changes in liking within a meal also influence the amount of food we eat.