Taste and Appetite on GAPS: Pleasure, Food and Oral Care

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride describes taste and pleasure as information to notice while eating. In the GAPS book, enjoying a natural food helps communicate that it suits the body’s needs at that moment. The same passage discusses processed foods, nutritional deficiencies and oral conditions that may alter taste.^[1]

Taste and Enjoyment During a Meal

The author treats food as a source of pleasure. Her explanation is that a needed food tastes appealing, and that this enjoyment is one of the ways the body communicates with conscious awareness. She asks readers to respect that signal rather than forcing an unappealing food solely because it is supposed to be healthy.^[1]

This is about choices within the foods available in the person’s GAPS approach. It is useful to notice the actual taste and preparation of a meal before deciding that a whole ingredient will never work. A different permitted preparation can be a different eating experience.

What the Book Says Can Alter Taste

The passage names three contributors. First are taste-altering chemicals in processed foods, which the author describes as toxic and capable of affecting taste for a long time. Second are nutritional deficiencies, specifically zinc and protein. Third are toxins in the mouth, including the dental-material concerns she discusses.^[1]

Those are the causes named in this GAPS passage. A changed taste alone does not identify one of them. If you keep notes, record what changed and what you were eating or using, rather than writing down a deficiency as though it had been measured.

Keeping Taste and Satisfaction Distinct

Taste concerns the food while you are eating it. Satisfaction concerns how you feel after a suitable meal. The next section of the book describes a comfortable state in which you can forget about food for a while, and it separately discusses a continuing pull toward sugar or chocolate.^[2]

That distinction gives you clearer notes: whether the meal tasted pleasant, when the pleasure changed, whether you felt satisfied afterward and whether a specific sweet craving remained. The satisfaction-after-eating guide and sugar and chocolate cravings guide explain those later questions.

Food and Oral-Care Changes in the Passage

The author’s food advice is to stop consuming processed products and eat a natural, wholesome diet so the deficiencies she describes can diminish and taste can return. For the mouth, she suggests brushing teeth with cold-pressed olive oil or another cold-pressed oil instead of toothpaste. She describes that as an Ayurvedic cleansing practice and calls working with a holistic dentist very important because of the materials she links with altered taste.^[1]

In my kitchen, I make GAPS versions of familiar foods and use homemade yogurt, kefir, ghee and sour cream. Those are foods we introduced through the GAPS dairy sequence. Having familiar ingredients ready gives me more ways to prepare a meal my family enjoys.

A Question About the Oil Suggestion

What Is the Step the Book Gives for the Mouth?

It specifically says to brush the teeth with cold-pressed olive oil or another cold-pressed oil. This passage does not describe a long swishing routine or give a separate oil-pulling duration.^[1]

Your Next Step

Notice the taste of the next permitted meal and what changes as you eat. My GAPS Food Swap Guide is listed in the WFLI Shop for the practical ingredient choices. Continue with smell and household fragrance or my personal-care guide for the related food and product questions.

References

1. Campbell-McBride, N. Gut and Physiology Syndrome (2020), “The Sense of Taste,” pleasure, processed foods, zinc and protein deficiency, oil brushing and dental materials.
2. Campbell-McBride, N. Gut and Physiology Syndrome (2020), “The Sense of Satisfaction After Eating,” pleasure-off signals and the separate sugar-cravings passage.