gjm comments on Adaptation-Executers, not Fitness-Maximizers - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 November 2007 06:39AM

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Comment author: J_Thomas 11 November 2007 05:23:04PM 18 points [-]

A long time ago I read a newspaper article which claimed that a Harvard psychological research project had women chew up chocolate and spit it out, while looking in a mirror and connected to some sort of electrodes. They claimed that after that the women didn't like chocolate much.

I tried it without the electrodes. I got a 2 pound bag of M&Ms. I usually didn't buy M&Ms because no matter how many I got they'd be gone in a couple of days. I started chewing them and spitting them out. Every now and then I'd rinse out my mouth with water and the flavor would be much more intense after that. I got all the wonderful taste of the M&Ms but I didn't swallow.

I did that for 15 minutes a day for 3 days. After that I didn't much like chocolate, and it took more than a year before I gradually started eating it again.

I think the esthetic pleasure of chocolate must have a strong digestive component.

Comment author: gjm 28 June 2016 10:11:57AM -2 points [-]

Another possibility is that there's something about chewing things and spitting them out that tends to make them less appealing. (E.g., the whole thing looks and feels kinda gross; or you associate spitting things out with finding them unpleasant -- normally if you spit something out after starting to eat it it's because it tastes unpleasant or contains unpleasant gristle or something like that.)