Satisfaction May Be the Best Sauce for Food

This nation has Puritan roots, a fact that flashed into my mind the other day while I was munching a slab of coarse, whole-grain, low-salt bread that was no doubt very good for me.

It occurred to me afresh while reading a recent issue of the Health & Nutrition Newsletter, published by Tufts University. In it, the writers pointed out that the U.S. dietary guidelines--which are supposed to help all of us eat more healthily--say nothing about actually enjoying what we eat.

This is in stark contrast to Britain, which urges--right at the beginning of its guidelines--to (if possible) “enjoy your food.” Or Australia, South Korea and Thailand, which also use the word “enjoy” in their guidelines.

Vietnam goes so far as to use the word “delicious” in its guidelines. And Norway--a land where fish soaked in lye (lutefisk) is a delicacy--declares that “food and joy = health.”

This link between enjoying food and getting nutrition from it may well be real, says the newsletter.

It cites a study in which groups of Swedish and Thai women were fed a Thai dish that the Thai women liked but that the Swedish women felt was “too spicy.” The Thai women absorbed more iron from the meal than the Swedish women.

But when the meal in question was switched to hamburger, string beans and potatoes, the Swedish women absorbed more iron than the Thai women.

Iron absorption dropped for both groups, though, when the food was whipped into a sticky, unappetizing paste.

Scientists don’t know why this absorption difference happens. But they suspect it has something to do with the connection between our brains and our guts--the fact that merely thinking about food can get our saliva and gut juices flowing, allowing food to be more thoroughly digested.

So what happens when a non-Norwegian eats lutefisk? Does it leach iron from the body?

Grandma, Turn Down the Backstreet Boys!

I’ve often wondered whether retirement homes of the future will be filled with the sounds of my youth--if instead of Frank Sinatra and old-time music hall hits, community rooms will reverberate to the Who, the Rolling Stones and albums with titles like “An Old-Time Christmas With the Sex Pistols.”

After all, we tend to like the music of our formative years.

But sometimes tastes change. And sometimes--rarely--they change because of problems in our brains.

In an article just published in the journal Neurology, Italian scientists report that a certain kind of dementia--called frontotemporal dementia--can give people a sudden appreciation for music they never liked before.

One 68-year-old patient, two years after his diagnosis, turned from a lover of classical music into a die-hard fan of a certain Italian pop band, which he delighted in playing at full volume.

Another patient, a 73-year-old woman who’d never cared much for music of any kind, suddenly started enjoying the pop music favored by her 11-year-old granddaughter.

Dr. Giovanni Frisoni, lead author of the study, speculates that this might be due to changes in the part of the brain involved in experiencing novel things. Alternatively, he says, damage to the brain might make pitches and rhythms that sounded awful in the past now sound pleasant.

In a news release about the study, the American Academy of Neurology, which publishes the journal, assures us that the research makes no judgment about any particular genre of music.

“Frisoni added that there is no accounting for musical taste, and that his study does not imply that pop music listeners have frontal dysfunction,” the academy carefully informs us.

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If you have an idea for a topic, write or e-mail Rosie Mestel at Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st. St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, rosie.mestel@latimes.com.