Food Alliesthesia

The Theory

The word “alliesthesia” has not yet entered common usage, even though it was coined around the 1970s from Greek roots. If you look it up in the Petit Robert dictionary, you’ll find “alligator”… The Encarta encyclopedia also seems to completely ignore it. The Hachette encyclopedia provides only a definition, without any further explanation:

Alliesthesia, noun (from the Greek alliosis, meaning alteration, and esthesis, meaning “sensory quality”). Subjective appreciation of the attractiveness or repulsion of a food based on the individual’s internal state.

This omission is surprising, given that alliesthesia is a key concept that could revolutionize dietetics. This demonstrates, once again, the inertia surrounding scientific discoveries—except when there is a commercial stake, as with computers or mobile phones. There are many forms of alliesthesia, each time sensitivity to a stimulus varies over time. For example, sensitivity to cold increases with fever, sensitivity to noise with fatigue, and so on. Alliesthesia mechanisms are closely linked to various instincts, acting as regulators of sensitivity to triggering stimuli.

The form that interests us here is obviously food alliesthesia, in which We can categorize the mechanisms that vary all sensations related to food: smell, taste, texture, and fullness.

This revolutionary concept was born in a red cabbage. It was 1964 in the USA. The story goes that I was transporting a whole picnic of raw vegetables from one hotel room to another to escape American food and noticed that a red cabbage, whose leaves I ate as is, without salt or any seasoning, changed taste from one day to the next. It even went, during the same meal, from a flavor reminiscent of an excellent coleslaw to a fibrous and pungent texture. A day or two later, it was as pleasant as it had been at the beginning, hence the hypothesis that the sense of taste is not an “objective” sense like sight or hearing, but that the perception of flavors is controlled by the brain in such a way as to indicate when food should or should not be consumed.

And its corollary: these mechanisms of Variations in taste would be genetically adapted to natural foods and ineffective against the “enhanced” flavors of processed foods.

The physiological mechanisms programmed by our DNA (instinctual and genetic) date back to the dawn of time, while processed foods are relatively recent: the rudiments of cooking date back to the Neolithic period (instinctual and archaeological), around ten thousand years ago, but culinary art as such developed primarily from the Roman era onward. It then experienced an explosion with the importation of sugar and spices during the colonial period.

Given that genetic adaptation takes thousands or millions of years, it is relevant to question the ability of alliesthetic mechanisms to react correctly to processed foods, particularly the most recent preparations.

The above hypothesis and its corollary were experimentally demonstrated in 2000 by a team of researchers. Austrian and French. Statistical observation revealed a more subtle alliesthetic negative perception with seasoned foods. The practice of instincto allows one to become aware of this daily: even the best foods become repulsive after the consumption of an amount that corresponds to the body’s needs or tolerance (for example, the appearance of inflammation in case of injury if the alliesthetic threshold is exceeded). Conversely, a food that has long been absent from the daily diet appears exceptionally appealing: it is perceived olfactorily from a greater distance, and the amount that can be consumed at each meal before the alliesthetic negative perception is significantly larger, then it returns to normal once the lack is compensated.

The instincto experience seems to demonstrate that our sense of taste is still adapted to primitive foods: the variations in flavor are particularly pronounced with wild fruits, for example, cempedaks, durians, and other forgotten wonders of the primeval rainforest. They are also The flavors are clearer with wild strawberries than with garden strawberries, which have been transformed by artificial selection. They are also clearer with wild meat or fish than with that of a farm animal, selected for its more palatable taste.

Alliesthesia thus appears as the key to nutritional balance under natural conditions. This is systematically undermined by culinary preparation (whose intrinsic purpose is to enhance the natural balance). Alliesthesia thus appears as the key to nutritional balance under natural conditions. Systematically undermined by culinary preparation (whose intrinsic goal is to make food taste better than in nature), it is sorely lacking in dietetics, which has no other means of guaranteeing nutritional balance than to recommend a so-called balanced diet, without any possible reference to actual needs, which vary from one individual to another and from one moment to the next.

Alliesthesia is intrinsically linked to the feeding instinct: it is through variations in olfactory and gustatory appeal that animals seek out suitable foods. It is essential that attraction turn into repulsion in order to avoid monotony or nutritional overload. The food instinct encompasses other components, such as visual sensitivity to shapes, colors, and movements, or the sensation of fullness (instincto-et-repletion). However, the senses of smell and taste appear to play a predominant role, particularly in mammals. Alliesthesia emerges as the keystone of the entire nutritional and ecological balance of the natural world, as well as the guarantor of species health.

In the culinary arts, alliesthesia mechanisms are constantly thwarted by preparations, cooking methods, seasonings, and other processes. Since flavors hardly change during consumption, they have been practically forgotten and are no longer part of our gastronomic culture. Only one vestige remains: the pleasure of taste, but this is not considered a regulatory mechanism for nutrition and health, for the simple reason that denatured foods that are pleasing to the palate may very well be unsuitable for the rest of the body. Pleasure (instinct and pleasure) is thus diverted from its homeostatic function to become an end in itself, sometimes signifying a useful food, sometimes a falsely seductive one—that is, providing pleasure upon ingestion while being harmful to the body. This explains the birth of a radically new problem, born of intelligence and artifice: that which we call gluttony (instinct and gluttony).

Furthermore, a “bottomless pit” phenomenon occurs: a food that bypasses the alliesthetic barrier causes an overload, so that all natural foods providing the same nutrients become less appealing; the processed food, on the other hand, remains just as attractive, creating a vicious cycle, because the more one consumes, the more unappealing natural foods seem. Culinary art, in this sense, constitutes a trap, into which every human being falls as soon as they begin to use their intelligence to transform their food and obtain more pleasure. This explains the universality of culinary art and the general neglect of alliesthetic guidance as a factor in health.

Instinct allows us to reactivate our natural alliesthetic function and rediscover the benefits of this fundamental ability, the only one capable of showing us the path to health through the simple act of experiencing pleasure. We must be aware that all animals in the world, including primates, have always relied on their senses of smell and taste to choose and portion their food. Humans seem to have been the first to circumvent these vital mechanisms, preoccupied for millennia by the gastronomic pursuit of pleasure. The persistent imbalances to which he has subjected his body are responsible for numerous pathologies, starting with weight problems and obesity, to which modern science allows us to add deadly diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases. It is therefore essential, for anyone wishing to restore proper nutritional balance and give themselves the best chance of regaining genuine health, to respect the conditions necessary for proper alliesthetic regulation.

A period of nutritional re-education is, however, necessary, as well as a normalization of nutritional excesses and deficiencies, so that regulatory signals return to normal levels. This means that the pleasure derived from natural foods cannot be assessed by tasting a raw food, even if it is appealing to the nose. It takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks of culinary detox to rediscover natural levels of pleasure, which ultimately surpass in intensity, purity, and depth those that gastronomy aims to provide.

Some references for this concept

In the same year, physiologist Michel Cabanac, who was studying thermoregulation, published his first communication concerning the influence of internal environmental factors on the pleasure triggered by a thermal stimulus¹. Two years later, he applied the same concept to gustatory stimuli². In a 1971 article³, he first proposed the term alliesthesia. This concept has since been reinforced by numerous articles and is included in the catalog of fundamental notions on the regulation of food intake. This does not prevent most dietitians from having yet to hear of it. For more details (etymology, etc.), see the Wikipedia article on “Alliesthesia” (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliesthesia).

In 1976, I presented my observations to Professor Jacques Le Magnen, who directed research on food intake at the Collège de France (on the very day he received his honorary doctorate from the University of Lausanne). After a good fifteen minutes of frowning, he exclaimed, “Actually, what you’re saying isn’t so stupid after all…” He invited me to write down all my thoughts and send them to him as soon as possible, assuring me that he would “translate them into scientific language.” This is how I came to write my first text: Essay on the feeding instinct in humans and definition of instinctotherapy. Unfortunately, I received no further news after sending this…

It is now accepted that there is a central system in the brain, receiving information from various receptors located throughout the digestive tract, involved in regulating food intake. The point that is not yet scientifically recognized is that this system is genetically programmed for natural flavors and can be disrupted by food processing. Only one publication⁴ supports this, demonstrating that simply altering the flavor of raw food by seasoning it is enough to significantly lessen the alliesthesia signals.

Dietetics has so far failed to take into account:

1. the existence of food alliesthesia
2. the inadequacy of processed foods. It is therefore understandable that it is unable to implement a nutritional balance that corresponds to the body’s actual needs and must resort to an average balance of meals.

Instinctotherapy, on the other hand, is based on both concepts. It therefore implies the elimination of culinary or industrial processing methods that could override sensory mechanisms (olfactory, gustatory, or otherwise). Experience shows that, under these conditions, the regulation ensured by the simple interplay of pleasure and displeasure guarantees a nutritional balance that precisely meets the body’s needs and capabilities. This point is demonstrated by various criteria: for example, by the spontaneous regulation of the inflammatory tendency, given that any pain related to inflammation disappears when the choice of foods and the portion sizes are ensured through alliesthesia (smell, taste, texture, satiety).

A broader experiment demonstrates that dietetics and instinctotherapy lead to convergent results: measuring average consumption under instinctonutrition in a sufficient number of people over a year shows that the average intake of various nutrients is very close to WHO recommendations. The difference lies in dietetics’ inability to adapt nutritional intake to daily variations in needs, whereas instinctotherapy ensures nutritional balance in real time, in line with individual characteristics and, on average, compatible with nutritional science data.

Practice

The main rule is to pay attention to all alliesthetic signals: at the levels of smell, taste, and fullness. The first negative signal prevails, meaning that consumption of a product should be stopped either at the first sensation of fullness or as soon as its flavor begins to turn unpleasant. These signals correspond to two respective limits: digestive capacity and metabolic needs.

Listening properly to the body implies a state of alertness: you have to think about what you eat, and not about daily or television-related concerns. It has been observed that the level of enjoyment increases considerably when one focuses on the food in their mouth, indicating improved functioning of the biological mechanisms involved in assimilation. Digestion is more efficient, but the senses of smell and taste also become more effective: pleasure is heightened and the alliesthetic response is more pronounced. Therefore, nutritional balance is more precise, with all the resulting benefits on a physiological, therapeutic, and psychological level (well-being, fitness, energy, good mood, etc.).

However, the essential condition for the proper functioning of alliesthetic mechanisms remains the quality of the food source. A single flawed product in the selection process leads to partial overload, inevitably diminishing the olfactory and gustatory appeal of other foods. The body lacks any innate mechanisms to effectively protect it against processed foods, leading to a bottomless pit effect when even one food consumed is not in its natural state. Dietary habits constitute a widespread bottomless pit, which explains, for example, why children demand sweets and cakes while refusing fruit, which would be far better for their health. Dislike of raw meat is another example, as consuming cooked meat leads to protein overload.

The sense of smell remains the key to breaking this vicious cycle: it allows us to identify natural foods that will most quickly regain their normal appeal, and which will therefore be the easiest to assimilate and the most conducive to restoring proper nutritional balance.