For thousands of years humans have relied on their 'gut feelings'- our sight, smell, taste and touch-to determine what foods are good for us and what are not. Even our hearing plays a part in telling us what is crisp and fresh.

This combination of senses, along with memory, was a vital protection against disease, says CSIRO nutritional scientist Dr Katrine Baghurst.

Our senses also told early humans that foods which were sweet and rich were also usually nutritious and safe to eat, and this may explain our modern liking for sweet and fatty things.

Australians still need to use their senses of smell, taste, touch and even hearing in choosing a diet that will help them live longer and avoid degenerative disease, according to Dr Baghurst.

"As hunter-gatherers we relied on our senses to tell us whether what we are eating is potentially harmful. Nowadays, it seems, we may have lost some of our innate sensory ability to protect ourselves.

"It is possible that we may have become less discriminating about things which may be harmful partly because we enjoy the protection of a modern food regulatory system," she says.

Another potential factor is sensory overload ­ the availability of a wide range of tempting foods that contain components which are highly attractive to certain senses, but can cause disease when overindulged.

Dr Baghurst believes that one of the key challenges in nutrition research is to gain a better understanding how sensory issues interrelate with other factors such as health concern, cultural norms, price and convenience, in determining food choice.

With the growth in travel, Australia's cultural mix and increasing dietary diversity, personal factors such as our tendency to neophobia or neophilia (the degree of our openness to new experiences-new tastes, new varieties, new food sensations) may also play an increasingly important role in food choice.

In the future people may also be willing to re-tune their senses to select those foods which lay the foundation for a longer and healthier life.

Dr Baghurst will address the CSIRO Food Industry Conference Gut Health ­ Make It Your Business at the Stamford Plaza Adelaide, 150 North Terrace Adelaide, today, Tuesday 16 September, 1997.

More information:
Dr Katrine Baghurst, CSIRO Human Nutrition 08 8303 8814
email: katrine.baghurst@dhn.csiro.au

Trisha Helbers, CSIRO Human Nutrition 08 8303 8870
Communications/Media Liaison
emails: trisha.helbers@dhn.csiro.au