Alliethesia and paranoia

There is a double link between alliesthesia and paranoia: on the one hand, the learning of food alliesthesia which should be done in early childhood, just after weaning, cannot be done correctly with foods processed by fireworks. culinary, the taste of which hardly varies; the child gets used to expecting satisfaction where he imagines it and lays the basis for a paranoid tendency; on the other hand, this paranoid tendency once installed pushes us to represent pleasure to ourselves in advance and makes it more difficult if not impossible to listen to alliesthesic signals; it constantly pushes us to transgress the indications of the dietary instinct and to eat beyond our real needs, which maintains a state of digestive and metabolic overload which, in turn, prevents to experience the variations of pleasure in their natural latitude.

N.B .: The following text was presented in the form of a neuropsychology assignment for a 3rd year license in psychology at the IED of the University of Paris 8 and obtained a grade of 20/20. If you have remarks, objections, suggestions, or if the language a little more technical gives you problems of comprehension, do not hesitate to announce them on the Forum ‘Instinctotherapy, theory and practice’, in ‘Other topics of discussion ‘in case your question does not fit into one of the existing discussion topics.

Food alliesthesia, defined in 1971 by Cabanac¹, manifests itself by subjective changes in olfactory and taste perception in relation to the nutritional state of the body. From the 1980s, there were more than a hundred publications on hedonic mechanisms, including specific sensory satiety (sensory-specific satiety). It is also necessary to add to the olfactory-gustatory alliesthesia other modifications of the organoleptic perception such as the impression of pleasant or unpleasant consistency, the sensations of harsh, acrid, raspy type, variations in salivation. , the more or less spontaneous swallowing reflex and other factors contributing to the impression of palatability. The feelings of satiety or fullness do not seem to be of the same order, although they also play an essential role in the interruption of food intake.

Olfactory-gustatory alliesthesia apparently plays a major role in nutritional regulation in animals, smell being involved in approaching food, and taste in accepting or refusing ingestion. I was able to observe a dog, for example, to which I gave a piece of raw meat every 30 seconds, to inhale for half a second conscientiously each piece before opening the mouth, then after having absorbed a good pound of it, to continue to inhale but turn away the muzzle as with regret at each presentation; then at my insistence (caresses, vocalizations) take an additional one in the mouth, try to chew it, and by obviously involuntary reflex of the tongue forcefully expel it to the point that it has fallen back a good distance. Other observations of the same type have convinced me that there is in animals and probably in humans a neurovegetative regulation capable of precisely dosing food intake in which the sense of smell and taste are decisive.

This automatic regulation seems capable of guaranteeing an exemplary nutritional balance, as shown by the absence of deficiencies in wild animals living in an adequate biotope; the height-weight disparities between individuals of a wild species are insignificant compared to the differences in overweight observed in the human species, whose representatives range from the most extreme thinness to sometimes overweight impressive, with very variable locations of excess fat.

The question arises, with an urgency underlined by the current obesity “epidemic”, of knowing what are the factors at play in the way of eating proper to man (at least to “civilized” man. that we think we represent). A hypothesis seems to me to be essential, arising from the simple comparison of eating habits either in animals or in humans: culinary processes, aimed at improving natural flavors for the pleasure of the palate, could disrupt alliesthesia regulation, in the extent to which it would be innate and therefore adapted to the food conditions in which the species evolved.

It is evident that neither primates nor their ancestors practiced the art of cooking. However, the human genome is largely identical to that of higher primates: the question therefore arises as to whether the alliesthesic mechanisms as they are programmed in our current genetic heritage are still adapted to the flavors of raw foods, such as whether our biological ancestors could eat them, or if they adapted to the processed foods that make up our daily food. Or if they have sufficient plasticity to adapt by learning to culinary flavors.

The same question arises in terms of experimental paradigms: observations made on flavor types that do not exist under natural conditions, such as a sugar solution, or pellets for laboratory animals, or a food with the addition of quinine, etc., can be the object of a “genetic bias”, insofar as the alliesthesic mechanisms are programmed for natural, non-dissociated and unmodified flavor patterns. A single study, published in 2006, looked at this question by comparing the alliesthesia regulation for six foods, either left in natural form or seasoned (Romer & al., Summary at the end of the bibliographic appendix). The results seem to confirm the hypothesis formulated here, and at the same time demonstrate the concomitance of the variations incurred by the other palatability factors, the absence of any influence of habituation in these variations, and the independence of the variations between the different products.

The different flavor patterns and other perceptions related to food intake seem to be part of a common axis of palatability, oriented over time from pleasant to unpleasant (never in the opposite direction during food intake). There is a systematic shift from attraction to repulsion, or “alliesthesia negativation” in Cabanac’s terms. A pineapple flavor can for example change from a pleasant fruity to an unpleasant acidity, even turning to irritation of the oral mucosa if one continues consumption, a raw olive flavor can switch from a pleasant bitter ( chocolate) to a crippling bitterness, a banana that is initially melting and creamy will suddenly appear rough and grassy, ​​etc. Then after a certain time, which can range from gastric transit time up to weeks or months, the foods that have become non-palatable again gain in olfactory attraction and palatability, in relation to the nutritional state of the organism (a for example, a need for energy will lead to a preference for sweet fruits over greens, a need for ascorbic acid to prefer citrus fruits to meat, etc.).

However, it emerges from experience that the alliesthesic negativation appears in the form of a much sharper tilting (almost a Hamilton function) with foods consumed in raw form, while the prepared foods give rise to a very fuzzy tilting, or even an almost total absence of negativation. The shift is also clearer for unselected plants and game meats than for common products refined by artificial selection for centuries. Wild strawberries eaten as they are, at first very tasty, suddenly strike the palate with their harshness, cultivated strawberries only lose their sweet component, and prepared with cream and sugar, they remain pleasant to the palate. even as they swell the stomach. Romer & al. obtain an overconsumption of 80% with a simple seasoning, which represents an important difference in terms of nutritional regulation. This figure can be much larger with more sophisticated preparations that are more flattering on the palate.

The culinary artifice thus makes the ingestion of products that would be repulsive or inedible in their natural form hedonic. There is a general tendency to regard this process as a cultural progress favorable to consumption, making life more pleasant and allowing to consume inedible food without preparation, to survive famines etc. However, it can have harmful consequences, either quantitative, for example inducing the consumption of excessive quantities of starchy foods after cooking and seasoning with the weight and pathological consequences that we know, or qualitative, by promoting the absorption of inappropriate foods, for example providing an excess of uric acid, leading to “gout” or oxalic acid causing kidney stones, even toxic like phalloid amanita in spicy sauce etc. It is obvious that cereals or raw potatoes, for example, can only be eaten in very small quantities, and that the phalloid amanita as it is has nothing attractive to the senses (only man is “smart” enough to deliberately put it in the mouth).

Cultural and physiological conditioning is indeed involved in this type of failure: one can get used to finding the taste of chewing tobacco or raw kola nut pleasant when they are very bitter for the palate virgin conditioning, or even to convince oneself that a pungent or hot drink (a coffee without sugar, a glass of vodka …) is exquisite if it is presented culturally as such, the conditioning by alcohol or other addictive substance then acting in the manner of l electrode implanted in the brain of Olds & Milner rats.

However, experience shows that the cultural factor remains minor when food is consumed in raw form and that it does not contain any addictive substance: it is impossible to force yourself to consume pineapple beyond alliesthesia negativation, the organoleptic contact becoming frankly painful; the same goes for figs, persimmons, grapes that are not very selected, and all foods sufficiently close to their original form. The turn to the unpleasant is extremely clear, which may explain the efforts made by our ancestors to restore palatability through various preparation devices.

How to prove that the alliesthesic function is innate? Several observations have shown me that the newborn, even before having suckled, therefore before any learning outside the amniotic fluid, is able to discriminate between different foods by simple olfaction: a few hours after birth, he knows how to open or not. not open your mouth according to the food you bring to your nostrils, chew and then swallow if the food has triggered the opening to smell, or spit out if you introduce another food into the oral cavity. After ingestion of a certain quantity of a desired food (for example 80 g of pre-chewed banana), the olfactory presentation no longer triggers an opening of the mouth (good example of feedback), and the forced introduction of an additional bite immediately triggers the spitting reflex. Another food can be accepted in turn in a certain quantity (in the same example 35 g of papaya), then a third one (20 g of fish). The quality of digestion (even before colostrum absorption), the absence of regurgitation, gas, intestinal disturbance and unpleasant odor of the stool (the faeces of wild animals do not smell bad) seem to confirm the innate capacity for regulation olfactory-gustatory.

Observation of alliesthesia reactions to natural foods suggests that there are pre-wired olfactory-taste patterns, much like the shape of a face for visual recognition, or the ability to distinguish circle from square already in the newborn. (Bower, 1977). The alliesthesic mechanisms seem adapted to natural flavors, because it suffices to add certain components (salt, sucrose, vanillin, quinine, etc.) or to subtract or neutralize others (tannins, bitterness of the olive, etc.) so that the Alliesthesic tilting is disorganized and the rations no longer correspond to the needs of the organism or to its digestive capacities.

It is true that specific perceptual patterns corresponding to multiple natural flavors would require very complex neuronal structures to be recognized. However, there are complex structures whose function is not yet clearly established, which seem to react in the manner of independent channels: the approximately 1900 glomeruli of the outer plexiform layer of the olfactory bulb could correspond to as many basic olfactory patterns, information that could be integrated and codified chemotopically at the level of mitral cells then mossy cells of the internal plexiform (a bit like the different layers of retinal cells do to circumscribe fields), then in a perceptual mode (relation between pattern and object) at the level of the associative olfactory areas of the paleocortex. The integration of lingual flavors would take place, for example, between the parolfactory area and the taste area, the perceptual connection at the level of the entorhinal area and the hippocampus, the reactivity of sniffing in the septal areas and the gyrus sub-callosum.

However, the amygdala and hypothalamus seem to play the role of the main referral station between food intake and rejection: the amygdala is in connection with the multiple structures involved in food recognition and metabolic regulation, stimulation has shown that its basolateral vs corticomedial nuclei stimulate vs inhibit AHL, and its bilateral destruction in rats eliminates any discernment between foods (Klüver and Bucy syndrome).

These few thoughts to show that it is not the structures that are missing. The ignorance of alliesthesia phenomena and their astonishing richness is undoubtedly due to culinary habits which systematically circumvent natural flavor patterns and inhibit perceptual shifts, not to mention the influence of a culture which systematically neglects the olfactory aspects, listed as animals. and in suitable, hence the lack of interest in phenomena which nevertheless play a major role in wildlife, food, maternal, sexual, territorial, zoopharmacological, relational, immune, etc., each situation corresponding to a specific pattern.

Such a pre-wired functionality, made more complex and particularized by learning, would make it possible to better understand not only the mechanisms of nutritional regulation, but also the astonishing immensity of the “vector space” of the different possible scents, the ability to differentiate the innumerable specific odors. millions of living and even mineral species, as well as individuals within species, from the infant discerning its mother from another, the learning of the smell of traces of explosives by demining rats, etc.

Alliesthesia regulation seems to go well beyond a simple ponderostat: during a protocol on the food composition of meals, on thirty subjects (humans) for two months, simple “obedience” to the senses (without dietary recommendations) was observed. apparently sufficient to ensure the correct balance of the various food components, carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, vitamins, even minerals and trace elements, as well as natural pharmacological substances (laxatives, anti-diarrheal, anti-inflammatory, antihelminthics etc.). Note that the first zoopharmacological observation showed that the chimpanzees were able to go in search of a natural anthelmintic (the leaves of an isolated shrub, related to the sunflower) while they presented an intestinal parasitosis, a capacity which is evident. has since been confirmed in less evolved species. This could also explain the astonishing knowledge of medicinal plants by “primitives”, certainly not attributable to statistical research.

The interruption of food intake by alliesthesia negativation implies that the digestive tract has receptors and nerve structures capable of predicting the energy and nutritional value of the quantities which have just been ingested - which now seems to be confirmed (module 8 p11 ). This presupposes the existence, for each food in the specific food range, of perceptual and operational patterns capable of recognizing the type of food, the volume ingested, and of “calculating” the values ​​of calories and sensitive nutrients. The innate and acquired factors certainly combine, but the fact remains that the absorption of “new” foods (at the time scale of genetic adaptation) can again pose problems: schematically, if the The body knows how to predict the glucose levels of wild fruits, there is no guarantee that it is doing the correct “calculations” as to the nutritional characteristics of foods that evolution has never faced, such as fries or hamburger. Such deregulation could explain the failure of the ponderostat as seen in the culinary context, for example with the current “epidemic” of overweight.

It is common to use the premise of adaptive learning that is supposed to occur in childhood, so that the body learns to recognize through negative conditioning the quantity limits corresponding to its needs. Such learning is undoubtedly possible with regard to digestive potential: exceeding digestive capacities results in discomfort which closely follows incorrect ingestion. On the other hand, it seems unlikely to me in terms of metabolic overload or impropriety: the time between the ingestion of a food inappropriate in quality or quantity and the perceptible signs of a nutritional overload obviously seems too long for a negative reinforcement can intervene and induce an automatism. Conditioning is possible with toxins passing rapidly into the blood and producing noticeable symptoms early enough to be related to ingestion. On the other hand, blood levels of glucose, amino acids or fatty acids are only able to signal food overload when digestion and intestinal absorption are sufficiently advanced and take precedence over glycogenesis or lipogenesis, and on cellular consumption. Even in diabetics, postprandial shock is not enough to install a spontaneous limitation of foods rich in carbohydrates.

Added to this is the competition between the cultural and hedonic motivations for food intake and its prolongation, which often seem to take precedence over physiological and neurophysiological indicators of satiety. For example, in obese children, we see a primacy of external pull factors over internal satiety factors, the significance of which they seem to have lost: the situation would undoubtedly be radically different if these children were only confronted with foods with which the alliesthesia mechanisms function normally and without any time lag. In the culinary context, the immediate hedonic nature of ingestion clearly takes precedence over subsequent nociceptive components, to a lesser extent even in normal individuals. The obesity rate is also likely to increase as a result of food overloads that have become established in manners for about fifty years, especially in terms of children’s nutrition, knowing that overeating irreversibly increases the number of adipocytes. in the first years of life.

On the other hand, there are hardly any alliesthesic mechanisms capable of regulating aggressive or sleeping behaviors. Unless one considers as a form of “aesthetic” alliesthesia the variations in subjective salience of the visual or behavioral characteristics of a rival or of a prey, which would explain for example that the male does not attack his congeners of the same sex by - outside periods of heat (therefore depending on the hormonal state), or a variable intolerance to noise depending on the different phases of sleep. Careful observation of human behavior may suggest the presence of the same type of phenomena interfering with cognitive processes, for example in the interpretive bias of mirage, which causes refractions on desert sand to be mistaken for a body of water when thirst is overwhelming. too pregnant.

A visual alliesthesia probably exists in the visual recognition of the prey by a raptor, which barely notices it when full and is perceptually much more responsive when hungry. Critchley & Rolls (1996) note a change related to hunger or satiety in the responses of olfactory and visual neurons of the orbitofrontal cortex in primates. However, olfaction seems to play a predominant role in mammals at this level, the behavior of a cat, for example, shows that it is only sensitive to the smells of neighboring mice when its nutritional needs are sufficiently acute: the same cat saturated with proteins (having prepared meat or dairy products thwarting alliesthesia negativation and inducing a metabolic overload), seems to no longer “see” the orifices of mice or voles burrows, becomes obese and completely gives up hunting, whereas ‘he still likes to play with a mechanical mouse; then after a sufficient time of natural meat and fish (without external limitation), he resumes conscientiously inhaling the holes he previously ignored, regains his hunting instincts, sometimes vomits his first meals, then digests them correctly and restores his weight normal.

The same phenomenon occurs in humans: a diet too rich in protein (cheese, dairy products, cooked meat and fish) often results in a nauseating perception of a fresh fish stall (or even vomiting when consuming raw seafood), while after a few weeks of a diet low in proteins and lipids, the same repulsion fades, the fish has on the contrary an attractive smell and we see some subjects delighting in oysters or raw sardines . Nutritional regulation therefore seems to unite olfactory-gustastic and organoleptic mechanisms, repletion mechanisms and again mechanisms of rejection of the nausea and vomiting type.

Many eating disorders, as well as the difficulty in finding a solution to them, could result from poor practical and theoretical knowledge of food alliesthesia. For example the difficulty of getting the public to absorb more fruits and vegetables, disadvantaged compared to industrial products whose goal is to be sold, which implies that they must necessarily thwart alliesthesia negativation and that they end up taking the step on natural products. Overweight and obesity appear to be nonexistent (except major disorders) with a diet consisting of raw products and alliesthesically regulated, whether in humans or laboratory mice. I was able to verify this on mice of AJ, C3H and C57 strains, perfectly capable of adapting their energy intake and ensuring their weight balance despite a great abundance of (crude) products from an early age, while their congeners, receiving “human” culinary menus, presented without exception in a few weeks a spectacular obesity, worthy of a lesion of the VHM.

These few observations tend to confirm the hypothesis of a still incomplete genetic adaptation of the organism to the flavors of prepared foods. As the perceptual, olfactory and gustatory mechanisms are to a large extent genetically determined, the fact of confronting them with situations too far removed from the primitive feeding conditions is likely to thwart their homeostatic function.

We would thus better understand that human beings (just like the domestic dogs and cats that their masters feed in the image of their own gastronomy), have something to worry about for their line, while wild animals benefit from regularity. Impressive height-weight: the foods available to them in nature are controlled by alliesthesia mechanisms, genetically adapted to the wild food environment. This suggests that the culinary preparation plays in itself a still underestimated role in the deregulation of the nutritional balance, in particular by the disconnection of the “ponderostat” (alliesthesic more than repletive) supposed to guarantee the ideal weight, and in many cases. dietary factor public health issues such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, type II diabetes and possibly even Alzheimer’s disease.

These considerations bring us back to another question concerning the general functioning of the psyche. Alliesthesia mechanisms are probably processed by the hypothalamus, upstream of the ventral and lateral areas. The general motivational functioning specific to this structure positions it from the outset as a sort of central processor of the vegetative motor response, capable of integrating a large number of vital information: sensory by the collaterals of the ascending pathways via the FRM, those from the olfactory bulb (which is connected to it very directly), others from the vegetative system thanks to its hormonal receptors, or even from the limbic system, which puts it in relation with the past experience and their affective colors, including the seahorse for traces of failure. The complementarity and opposing functionalities of AHL and VMH seem to show that the hypothalamus knows how to weigh up the pros and cons and decide between approach and withdrawal, in other words: “say yes or no”.

One could argue, more generally, that the hypothalamus is the central instance where the archaic psychic function of the switch between yes and no is played out, a function through which we deal with most problems. This concerns both food intake and aggression, very similar in our genetic past, aggression mostly consisting in ensuring access to food, but seems to extend to many other behaviors.

All things considered, the whole of the psyche functions fundamentally on the mode of yes or no, whatever the behaviors considered, even in the logic of the excluded third, with the biases that this one can represent in relation to the complexity. of the real. From this could also arise the “visceral” tendency to reason in the linear mode, which founds our mathematics (if a increases, b increases = yes, or decreases = no). Another common tendency in our thought patterns leads us to focus our attention on the goal pursued, while obscuring the perverse effects of action. In a way, man lacks the “ecological impulse” or “extrapolation impulse” which would usefully make him foresee the consequences of his actions, for example that intensive cultivation ends up endangering the soils, that a first atomic bomb inevitably calls for others, etc. This form of inhibition can also be related to an overbidding of the yes / no function, the interest for the invention corresponding to the yes / no (engagement / withdrawal of the action), and the extrapolation to a position of questioning and disinvestment.

However, nothing says that our psyche could not function differently, and spontaneously give more space to medium terms or to perverse effects.

The acceptance / rejection shift seems to dominate executive functions, and the hypothalamus’s responsibility may explain the constant interference of instinctual and emotional processes with reasoning and decision-making. From the point of view of cerebral connections, the ventromedial cortex is at the end of the median telencephalic bundle, which precisely crosses the hypothalamus, carrying upward and downward signals, without forgetting the essential role of the amygdala as a “server” connecting these. structures. The prefrontal cortex being connected to the orbitofrontal zone by intracortical routes, the entanglement of the emotional, the instinctual and the memory contents on the mode of the yes / no in the treatments by the working memory and the executive functions n no wonder. By introspection, it seems that affect conditions each of our yes / no choices through the memory of past events (that was good, that was bad).

The problem then arises of knowing to what extent the early alliesthesic experiences are involved in the cortical structuring . The cortex in fact develops, both ontogenetically and in phylogenesis, with a certain delay in the so-called limbic system. It is therefore likely that interneuronal connections are put in place during the first months or years depending on information coming from the limbic system, in particular from the tonsillar complex and the hypothalamus.

However, the first and most important sensory experiences of pleasure / unpleasure, and therefore of positive and negative reinforcements, take place in the food sphere already in the first year. The baby brings all food to his mouth, oral sensitivity being predominant over other perceptions. Such pregnance is also explained on the phylogenetic and ontogenetic levels, the simple organisms already having their survival to chemotaxis, of which the olfactory and gustatory senses are undoubtedly the heirs, and each small mammal starting by having to identify the udder, then the first ones. foods necessary for its development.

If these first experiences take place in a context of stimuli too distant qualitatively or quantitatively from that for which the organism is genetically programmed, we can expect a deviation of the first learning, in particular a poor integration of the yes / no function. by cortical structures from hypothalamic information that is too one-sided, deprived of the diversity and variations that they would have under natural conditions².

In the primitive food context, the flavors regularly turn from pleasant to unpleasant. In addition, they are only pleasant if the food tested meets the body’s needs, but a repellent food at one point may turn out to be attractive some time later. The subject is therefore permanently obliged from an early age to wonder about the pleasure or the displeasure that the food that he mentally imagines will give him. This process being the same for all natural foods, a generalization occurs, by extraction of invariants, which manifests itself in a general mode of operation: faced with any representation, the questioning position remains the basic position.

In the processed food context, the pleasant flavors remain much longer and more often pleasant. The subject is led by the repetition of the experiments to attribute the perspective of pleasure or unpleasure to each food in the form of an affirmation (sweets are good), and the experience is verified regularly, bringing as many reinforcements to this mode of operation. The basic position facing any representation will tend towards a position of certainty.

We have schematically (table 1):

| Primitive context | Transformed context | +———+———–+———-+———+ | Past | Future | Past | Future | +———+———–+———-+———+ | Good | Uncertain | Good | Good | | Bad | Uncertain | Bad | Bad |

A first inference would suggest that the primitive context left room for permanent uncertainty in olfactory-gustatory experiences, depriving the psyche of a solid basis for development; the civilized context, based on the culinary art, would on the other hand have the advantage of providing a more secure basis for the psychic structuring of the young child, allowing him to rely on the forecast of pleasure or on the expectation of displeasure and to promote thanks to this principle of simple relation the development of its executive functions.

On the contrary, On can postulate that the potentialities of development of the psyche are genetically programmed in such a way as to structure themselves in the context of stimuli provided by the primitive food environment, and that the modification of the stimuli in the sense of a constancy of perceptions risks inducing a paradoxical structuring, which could be a source of internal (or relational) conflicts. This could be expressed neurobiologically at the level of the cortical integration of the functioning of the limbic system: the yes / no function of the hypothalamus and the tonsillar complex may not provide the executive centers with the adequate material they need to establish a right balance between affirmation / negation and questioning, central decision-making process.

The early learning of too much predictability of pleasure seems likely to instill a tendency towards “representational overinvestment”, perhaps through unbalanced networks of connections between the structures involved in the switch between yes, no and hesitation-questioning, which could be the basis of paranoid structures or borderline organization. The ego is in fact constituted on the basis of the conflicts between the search for pleasure and the experiences of reality. If the balance between positive and negative reinforcements is not appropriate (not in accordance with the genetic potential of the individual), it is the very structuring of the ego that is likely to suffer. It is most likely the interneuronal connections that will establish themselves differently, very irreversibly setting up a paradoxical cortical relationship to limbic functioning. That is, our intimate relationship to our own instincts and awareness of our emotions may be structurally altered as a result of the early hypofunction of the alliesthesia mechanisms and the pleasurable / unpleasant experiences associated with them.

Such a paradoxical structuring will result in a defective integration of emotion and instinctual motivations with cognitive and executive functions, for example giving an exaggerated place to the affective investment in desire, and by consequence to disappointment, or to illusion of being able to control the real or the emotional from the cognitive “I”. This implying the relationship to pleasure or displeasure, and therefore to positive or negative emotions, one might even expect a repercussion on the distribution of skills between the two hemispheres.

It is also necessary to take into account the repercussions on the nutritional education of the child by his parents. In the primitive context, alliesthesia is sufficient in the vast majority of cases to allow the child to feel what suits him and what does not suit him. Parents, finding their digestive balance themselves on a daily basis through obedience to pleasure / displeasure, will be able to have great confidence in the child and allow him the freedom to make his choices, laying the foundations for his future independence.

In the modified context, the situation is reversed owing to the fact that the alliesthesic mechanisms are no longer reliable: the parents have no other way to guarantee the good nutrition of their offspring than to intervene constantly to encourage them to eat. or forbid him certain foods. For example, the child will find candy or pasta very attractive, and his parents will tell him that the former is bad for the teeth, and that the latter could make his obesity worse. The child therefore develops a relationship of dependence and frustration, the stake of which is his own health, at the same time as the urges for transgression in order to appropriate the prohibited pleasures. We can see in this problem the origins of dietetics, like those of delinquency …

Schematically, the situation can be summarized as follows (Table 2):

| Primitive context | Transformed context | +———+———–+———-+———–+ | Taste buds | Health | Taste buds | Health | +———+———–+———-+———–+ | Good | Good | Good | Uncertain | | Bad | Bad | Bad | Uncertain |

It follows from the laws of natural selection that foods that are good for the palate should generally be good for the health, the opposite leading to a loss of energy or to harmful effects in terms of health. Conversely, a food that is bad for the palate is unlikely to be good for the health, a certain selection pressure also being put into play in the event that the animal is led by its senses to reject a food potentially useful for its organism. .

There is a fundamental inversion of Table 1 to Table 2, between the context primitive and context transformed. Under primitive conditions, pleasure is not predictable, but if it is present it leads to health; whereas under the transformed conditions, pleasure is predictable, but uncertainty reigns as to the results on the body - hence the need for dietetics or sound advice on what to eat. Such uncertainty, on the basis of a desire heightened by the predictability of pleasure, is likely to induce permanent stress involving existential anxieties, dating back to infancy.

Reactive formations will then be found in different individual or social behaviors, such as bulimia, anorexia, subjection to all kinds of food gurus and dangerous diets (macrobiotics, Atkins, etc.), in the craze for certain foods declared to be beneficial over the ages (garlic, ginger, vitamin cures, donkey’s penis, etc.) and more paradoxically in a denial of the influence of food on health, which could explain the from a sociopsychological point of view, the secular delay in medical research on the dietary causes of pathologies such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and even obesity. The same reactionary formation could be at the origin of the “cult” which surrounds the kitchen in most civilizations, French gastronomy in mind, the institutionalized quest for pleasure being a counterpart of the unconscious anguish due to the loss of the natural guidance towards nutritional balance, coupled with a loss of confidence in the natural capacities of self-regulation. Granting the pleasure of the palate knowing that it represents an asset for health is very different from granting it with the prospect, conscious or unconscious, that it could represent a nuisance.

To come back to our initial question, these few considerations lead us to wonder about the role that culture plays alongside other exogenous factors in the genesis of feeding behavior, and to what extent the balance between exogenous factors and endogenous is modified by the different effects of the culinary art.

The place of culture in the traditional food context could have increased for two reasons: a direct reason arising from the simple fact that endogenous regulation is faulty as a result of the genetic maladjustment of alliesthesic mechanisms to processed foods, the loss of reference points natural therefore calling for security through beliefs, traditions, reasoning, medicine, nutritional sciences; an indirect reason, education installing this form of dependence in the child from an early age, and diverting him from the rare internal signals that could still ensure natural regulation in favor of all kinds of stereotypes more or less founded, but incapable to respond correctly to the variability of nutritional needs according to energy expenditure, vitamin deficiencies, immune constraints, etc.

Internal determinants of food intake include levels of circulating glucose and amino acids, as well as leptin level as a function of fat stores, glycogen stores in liver and muscle cells, the ability of cells to utilize well glucose (detectable by delta-glucose), processed centrally by the hypothalamus and associated structures from specialized receptors. There are certainly still other factors capable of influencing the feeling of hunger and the alliesthesic mechanisms in relation to various possible deficiencies (experience shows that spontaneous regulation guarantees a sufficient intake of the various food components: the lack of lysine, for example example, following a deprivation of animal proteins, empirically results in an increase in the olfactory-gustatory attraction for meat and fish, etc.).

We can also classify among the endogenous factors the positive associations acquired by learning between the memory of certain types of food and the patterns of internal sensations corresponding to the needs that they have made it possible to cover (the vegetative system having a cortical representation at the level of insula), or negative associations between food and digestive discomfort, as well as eating habits, not to mention the capacity for imitation and imagination, or even fatigue and sleep as inhibitors.

Among the external factors, we will first find the foods available in the environment, their quality of flavor, maturity, the flavors and aromas that the Ancients dedicated to the Gods, but also the presence of congeners consuming them, the rules of conviviality, propriety, any advice or inducements from third parties, advertising, etc.

In the unprocessed context, external factors and cultural factors will remain subject to alliesthesia filtering, so that food will only be consumed to the extent that it meets a real need of the body and a sufficient digestive potential. Attempting a forced ingestion results in discomfort or discomfort in the mouth, even gastric pain (common when overcoming alliesthesia negativation) so that such deliberate behaviors are the exception.

In the culinary context, the balance of power will be reversed, in the sense that the sight of foods or their memory, their presentation, their preparation, their improved flavors, the relations of conviviality, the eating habits, the good manners like the principles Diet will take precedence over much more vague, or even non-existent, alliesthesia filtering. Satiety will replace alliesthesia negativation to interrupt food intake, but the sensations of fullness being themselves more blurred and subject to autosuggestion with prepared foods, it will ultimately be more reasoned principles or rules of imitation and convenience that will regulate food choices, times and amounts ingested.

Let us note in conclusion that the disabling of alliesthesia mechanisms by the culinary artifice is not unrelated to the ecological question. The question arises as to what is the “primitive food range” of man, that is to say which natural foods we are genetically best suited to. The tiger is programmed to feed on meat, the wildebeest to digest the grasses of the savannah with their seeds; the chimpanzee balances itself from some two hundred foods available in the rainforest, mainly fruits, some foliage and insects. It is not necessarily possible to switch the food ranges from one species to another without pathogenic consequences (the tiger fed on grass and wild meat wildebeest, etc.). However, man is the first of the primates to feed mainly on cereals and animal milk borrowed from another species. There is reason to wonder about the consequences that these new techniques, dating back to the Neolithic, can have on health and life expectancy.

They undoubtedly have effects on the environment. Cereal and tuber crops, as well as ruminant breeding, have had serious consequences in terms of desertification, and threaten to have more, through impoverishment, soil erosion, pollution, ’’ depletion of water tables, degradation of biodiversity, etc. The urgency is to feed six billion more people than to ask questions. It could nevertheless be useful to know the primitive food range of man to reason about the causes and the remedies that it would be possible to bring to this situation.

However, food alliesthesia can help rediscover the natural foods for which the human body is best suited. Subject to excluding any alteration of the taste, therefore any artifice modifying the natural flavors (including artificial selection), and to practice the experiment in conditions avoiding as much as possible cultural conditioning (by observing for example very young children ), as well as the previous nutritional imbalances likely to modify the natural appetites and aversions, it is in principle sufficient to compare the levels of pleasure perceived during the consumption of the different foods delivered by the natural environment in various latitudes, to obtain a list in order preferably foods specific to the human species. The membership criteria are on the one hand olfactory and taste attraction, on the other hand a frank alliesthesic negativation and thirdly a variability of the perceptual response in correspondence with nutritional needs. The combination of these criteria gives a good guarantee in terms of genetic adaptation (they automatically eliminate prepared foods, over-selected products, as well as animal milk).

The first results seem to show a very strong resemblance between the preferential food range of humans and that of chimpanzees or orangutans. Cereals and animal milk are involved in only minimal, if any, proportions, which points to the fairly widely held idea that humans are mainly frugivorous. It seems attracted by a large number of fruit varieties, in particular tropical and subtropical fruits, by plants in the form of leaves, stems and roots in smaller numbers, and in a lesser by different animal proteins (meat, eggs, crustaceans , molluscs, insects), and that it needs a diversity comparable to that of the food range of the great apes to balance itself properly. The experiment was carried out in particular in the primitive forest of Borneo, which seems to provide the foods that best meet human genetic programming. It is not possible in any natural environment: in tropical forests without the presence of hominids, the lack of consumption of certain fruits has apparently led to their disappearance due to the lack of dissemination of seeds. It should be noted that no food attractive to the smell and taste has produced digestive disorders or intoxication.

On the ecological level, a diet close to such a primitive food range would doubtless not have led to the ecological problems that we know: there would have been no cereal fields (rice alone represents 150 million d ‘hectares), nor large pastures to pave the way for desertification, as archeology has now proven in many regions (for example in the ancient territory of the Sumerians). The original forest would at most have been partially replaced by vast orchards of tropical or related species, sheltering pastures for a few farm animals, without presenting the same drawbacks in terms of hydrological balance, soil erosion and general pollution.

These speculations remain very utopian, but the capacity to generate utopias is part of our cortical potentialities (one of the aspects of Gazzaniga’s hypothesis generator). In this case, they could pave the way for a reflection on human eating behavior, and why not for certain corrections likely to improve the lot of populations as much as that of the planet …