You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey.

Today's cool fact of the day is that obesity makes it harder to taste.

And this is one that I actually look back as a former obese 300 pound person.

I think it's actually true.

There's a new study and they compared siblings that were fed normal mouse chow

versus mice given high junk fat meals lost about 25% of their taste buds over eight weeks.

And they think the taste buds went missing because the mature taste buds cells die off more quickly

and fewer new cells develop to take their place.

And they think it's because chronic low level inflammation that's tied to obesity

appears to be behind the loss here.

And this comes from Cornell University.

And each taste buds about 50 to 100 cells and they sense whether food is sweet sour, bitter,

salty or savory or has carbon dioxide or has fat in it.

And there's actually a few other things that most people don't know they can do.

And they help identify safe and nourishing food and stimulate the reward centers in your

brain, which is why foods with undamaged proper fats and then actually taste so good.

The tongue's taste buds population gets renewed regularly and each taste buds only last

about 10 days.

And there are cells called progenitor cells that give rise to new taste buds cells.

They're placed the old ones.

So this stuff is happening in your mouth all the time and you don't know it.

And if you get obesity the way I did, this ongoing inflammation just causes cellular damage

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