Why do we like our food hot?!
- Thread starter riverline
- Start date
A preference for hot (or very warm) food is quite simple to explain: Anything heated will produce a larger number of excited molecules in it's immediate area.
And the more aromatic molecules there are floating about your food, the easier it is to smell and taste that food - thus enhancing it and making eating more pleasurable.
Ever try eating when you have a bad cold and totally stuffy nose? It's not very rewarding because even the best food tastes rather like cardboard - almost tasteless. And that's not pleasurable OR fun.
And the more aromatic molecules there are floating about your food, the easier it is to smell and taste that food - thus enhancing it and making eating more pleasurable.
Ever try eating when you have a bad cold and totally stuffy nose? It's not very rewarding because even the best food tastes rather like cardboard - almost tasteless. And that's not pleasurable OR fun.
A professor of neurobiology has hypothesized that the preference for spicy foods in warm climates is an adaptive behavior.
Edit: I'm sorry, I jumped to the conclusion that you meant hot as in spicy, but you're talking about thermally. Probably the better way to ask that question would be to ask why humans generally prefer cooked food over eating plants and animals raw.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1111_051111_spicy_medicine.html
Edit: I'm sorry, I jumped to the conclusion that you meant hot as in spicy, but you're talking about thermally. Probably the better way to ask that question would be to ask why humans generally prefer cooked food over eating plants and animals raw.
A chimp researcher has proposed that learning to cook food spurred our evolution.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cooking-up-bigger-brains
My dog when he was little and sick, he would only eat warm food. If it wasn't warm he wouldn't eat it.
Heh! I doubt it would make a measurable difference at all. Because soon after you swallow it, it will drop to body temperature.
And besides, that would have nothing to do with the question the poster asked.
Because hot ice cream keeps falling off the cone.
well my argument stems from this:
we like our food hot because for our body it allows for better/faster digestion (breakdown of food particles by enzymes), which gives us pleasure faster.
Also I would like to invoke the Pavlov dog experiment, where a dog was given an association with a bell and food being served, after a while only the bell was ringed and the food was not there yet the dog still produced saliva and whigged its tail in anticipated of food because of association.
So we are like dogs by an association have come to see hot food as more pleasurable. And yes there is also the fact that hot food also releases scent easier.
well here's a question...if we like our food hot than how come we like ice-cream at all?
Through association.
Nope, you're heading up the wrong path completely. Although we feel satisfaction after having eaten, the MAIN pleasure comes during the eating itself - not later while we are digesting it. (Unless you happen to be built totally backwards from the rest of the human race - which, in your case, I suppose IS possible.)
Nope, you're heading up the wrong path completely. Although we feel satisfaction after having eaten, the MAIN pleasure comes during the eating itself - not later while we are digesting it. (Unless you happen to be built totally backwards from the rest of the human race - which, in your case, I suppose IS possible.)
well since you going that way. I don't know how it works for you grandpa with all the organs not doing their job too well.
I am saying that Pavlov's dog felt pleasure from hearing the bell because of association with food that gave it pleasure.
So an old man who barely can chew properly
hahahhaha...still has some memories (if not for Alzheimer's) of the pleasure associated with food that is hot, thus the tastebuds make more saliva and pleasure is there.
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Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
It seems likely to me that the preference is cultural, rather than biological. We like hot foods because our foods tend to be cooked, and that led to certain cultural expectations and practices that seeped into our culture and inform our tastes.
The most popular flavors of ice cream in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were savory flavors: beef ice cream, oyster ice cream (Dolley Madison had quite a taste for the oyster ice cream), etc. Today most people in the U.S. would reject that out of hand, but in other parts of the world, fish ice cream, tongue ice cream, even reports of horsemeat ice cream (in Japan).
We seem to like things at extreme temperatures (without venturing into any painful extremes) perhaps because of the sensation generated by the extreme difference and because we have certain expectations. (That said, I do not know that I prefer a hot or cold ham sandwich to a room temperature one.) The thing is, though, I am reticent to say that that preference is universal (let alone biological) just because I identify with it.
The most popular flavors of ice cream in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were savory flavors: beef ice cream, oyster ice cream (Dolley Madison had quite a taste for the oyster ice cream), etc. Today most people in the U.S. would reject that out of hand, but in other parts of the world, fish ice cream, tongue ice cream, even reports of horsemeat ice cream (in Japan).
We seem to like things at extreme temperatures (without venturing into any painful extremes) perhaps because of the sensation generated by the extreme difference and because we have certain expectations. (That said, I do not know that I prefer a hot or cold ham sandwich to a room temperature one.) The thing is, though, I am reticent to say that that preference is universal (let alone biological) just because I identify with it.
well since you going that way. I don't know how it works for you grandpa with all the organs not doing their job too well.
I am saying that Pavlov's dog felt pleasure from hearing the bell because of association with food that gave it pleasure.
So an old man who barely can chew properly
You think you're being smartly amusing - but actually you're just showing what a mental genius you aren't. (Still a little kid and still acting like a little kid.) :shrug: Maybe you'll finally grow up before you die - maybe.
There's obviously a fair amount of truth in that. But for the most part, I still say Americans (in general) enjoy hot foods because the heat increases the aroma *considerably*.
I've been nearby many an outdoor grill - and the aroma was VERY heavenly!
On the other hand, when the same meat that was grilled just a few hours ago is taken out of the fridge cold, my reaction is *greatly* reduced - because I can barely smell it (if even at all) from a shot distance away.
I prefer sushi, egg salad sandwiches, cold cuts, stone crab claws, salads and ice in my drinks. I do eat hot foods but really do prefer cool foods more. Remember that once the food hits your stomach it is already at about 98 degrees F so it really doesn't matter what you like to taste with it all ends up the same temperature rather quickly.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
The mastery of fire and, therefore, cooking did not become widespread until around 100KYA. Our species was fully established in its current form at that time, with all organs in the sizes and proportions they are today. So we had reached this point in our evolution without cooked food.
Cooking did two things for us.
- It streamlined eating. It's been calculated that it took our earlier ancestors three hours per day to chew and swallow enough raw meat to satisfy their nutritional requirements.
- It provided us with much greater food choices. We cannot digest raw cellulose. This means that many of the important plant tissues in our modern diet were off the menu. We could extract the sugar from fruits and the (unbalanced) proteins from nuts and seeds. But we could not access the protein in grains and legumes (whose amino acids would have balanced those in nuts and seeds, making a vegan diet possible), and just as importantly we could not make use of the calorie-rich starch in tubers, roots and other fleshy plant tissue.
Ironically, the first cultivated plants of which we have archeological evidence were fruits (figs in Mesopotamia and peppers in the New World), which provide nutrition raw.
Could it also be because it doesn't leach any of your heat?
Surely cold food would lower your core temperature a little?
Surely cold food would lower your core temperature a little?
Hot food has more flavor. The taste particles are given higher energies which allow them to escape and be tasted or smelled.
I think a more interesting question is why we like hot (spicy) food.
I think a more interesting question is why we like hot (spicy) food.
Yep, that's exactly what I said in the very beginning.
(And a couple of times since then.)