Food limits

[mattbell]

It seems that the senses of taste and smell are finely honed to ensure you eat the right amount of a particular food.  For example, if you keep eating bananas, the taste will go from good to icky to vomit-inducing.  It's your body's way of telling you that you've just ingested too much of a particular chemical and that it's time to stop.  What's good in small doses is bad in large doses.

Because I get large quantities of veggies from frogpyjamas, I've been exploring the limits of good taste in a literal sense.   I've established some "food limits" which I somehow feel compelled to share. 

Here's how much you can eat in one sitting before the taste goes bad.

The banana limit is 3.
The persimmon limit is 3.
The mandarin orange limit is about 15.
The raw broccoli limit is 1/2 a head.
The cooked baby bok choy limit is 3.
The raw cabbage limit is 1/8 a head.  Very low.
The cooked leek limit is 3.  This is not necessarily a good thing as you will smell like leek for several days.
Also...
The milk limit is 1/2 a gallon.
The beef limit is 25 oz.  Surprisingly high.  Perhaps that's because in caveman days, we'd make a kill of some large animal, and we'd have to eat it all before it went bad.
The ice cream limit... well, it seems that desserts and some junk foods seem to be extremely good at suppressing our taste limits.  Is that by accident or is it the result of some clever food engineering?  I once ate half a birthday cake over the course of an hour.  I felt fine at the time, but I later had a huge stomachache. 

Comments

[xleste.livejournal.com]

Somehow I found this post really funny, and thanks for sharing your results!!

[frogpyjamas.livejournal.com]

Alas, my raw broccoli limit is a mere 1/3 head.

[zingkotori.livejournal.com]

I wish I had a jelly bean limit. It would keep me out of trouble.

[debramcp.livejournal.com]

awesome post! i think the lack of a sweet limit is similar to the lack of a meat limit. back in caveman days, you had to live by the season, so if you ran into a berry bush (yummy sweets!) you'd eat as much as you could because they'd be gone soon.

i read a book in college called "why we get sick" that is about evolutionary medicine, and they had a portion that explained the evolutionary link to food cravings that in these modern times are unhealthy for us. you've already got the right ideas in mind, so you might enjoy it. it talks about all sorts of evolutionary hold-overs. cool stuff.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

sounds cool. I'll have a look. thanks.

[radiantsun.livejournal.com]

point of confusion: my limit - ie uiversal, or the limit you have found for yourself?

I have had about a 1/2 gallon of milk and while I could have had more I"m glad I sotpped because my tummy got so puffy and bloated that it hurt alot until it all passed . . ..

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it varies from person to person. It's also not how much you can drink total, it's more how much you can drink before it stops tasting good.

[radiantsun.livejournal.com]

ooh. in that case it was much less-- I really don't like milk much at all. I like it in my coffee as cream, and I like yogurt and some icecream.

It is an interesting thing to thinkk about-- finding one's limit in terms of food. I don't really like bananas unless they are super ripe., I like boccolini but I wat it with cheese yogurt (or 2% plain yogurt) mixed with pepper and salt and horseraddish, thus disguising the taste of the broccoli. I like lots of spinach and a certain kind of salald.
hmmmanyway will try something more formal sometime.

[brix777.livejournal.com]

I just find out my limit for coffee, its 6 cup. Im sic and want hot drinking, so I drink koffee and sit in computer. My sore throat is going worse, hmm I still think I can't drink one more cup. Or may be I can, Ijust don't like it...

[shaix.livejournal.com]

I laughed out loud at the very last line.

It's an interesting observation, and one I had not before considered....

[resipisco.livejournal.com]

With the right framing, this would make a fine BIL talk.

Rambles this post kicked off in my head

[lasofia.livejournal.com]

People are often surprised/appalled/impressed at how much of one item of fresh food my dad can eat in one sitting. For example, several pounds of oranges. A pound of pecans. My dad's take on it is that evolutionarily speaking, when the fruit is ripe, best to eat it.

I've never found my mango limit though I'm sure it's there.

When I was nursing Teo my chicken limit was more than one chicken (rotisserie). Not sure how much more as I never bought more than one at a time. My butter limit was more than a stick (with a bit of bread) but again, I didn't explore the outer bounds. Protein and fat, anyone?

I've never found my freshly made tamal limit either, but my stomach says no more after about a dozen (fairly small) ones.

Now I want to go experiment. Hmmm. Thanks!

Re: Rambles this post kicked off in my head

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Wow... a chicken limit of greater than 1? That's like breaking the speed of light. :-)

[e2718ipi.livejournal.com]

Hats off to you for eating 25 ounces of beef. That's just a bit over 6 quarter-pound patties.