The Atlantic

Why Does Sweetness Taste So Good?

A new study hints at how the brain flags different flavors as delicious or disgusting.
Source: Brandon Wade / Getty

The experience of taste is both essential and ephemeral. It’s the reliable bite of your morning coffee, and it’s the charred sweetness of your first campfire marshmallow, so deeply associated with a particular setting that you forget about it until another marshmallow and another campfire shocks it back into your mind. There’s so much tied up in taste that it’s easy to overlook the fact that our ancestors likely evolved it as a way to make sure we recognized sweet foods

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic4 min read
When Private Equity Comes for a Public Good
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. In some states, public funds are being poured into t
The Atlantic4 min readAmerican Government
How Democrats Could Disqualify Trump If the Supreme Court Doesn’t
Near the end of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments about whether Colorado could exclude former President Donald Trump from its ballot as an insurrectionist, the attorney representing voters from the state offered a warning to the justices—one evoking

Related Books & Audiobooks