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

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