A matter of taste

It is Friday night and I am having a quiet moment.
I am listening to soft piano music and eating a pomegranate.
I am thinking:
This must be world’s most aerobic fruit.
I am burning more calories eating it, then the calories I am getting eating it.
(If you don’t know what I am talking about, you should try eating one :)

I am also noticing the really subtle flavor of the fruit and I am thinking:
Funny how lately everything I eat seems more flavorful than usual.
And I don’t think that they are selling better produce at the market.
I think it is because I have changed my diet recently.

You see, I thought I was eating pretty healthy.
I knew I had a sweet tooth but other than that I thought I was doing great.
That was until I got my physical exam and discovered I had my triglyceride levels way above normal.
In other and simpler terms I had way too many calories in my blood stream than I need it.

I found out that my love for sweets, nuts and avocados – which I thought were the healthiest things on earth – were part to blame for this problem.
Of course the other part of the blame was my lack of physical exercise.
Living the modern life means that we are burning far less calories than our ancestors while our calorie intake has risen dramatically.

So I took a quite drastic decision: No more sugar in my life.
At least not the refined or the fructose syrup kind.
I stopped adding sugar to my coffee, tea and anything else.
I also stopped drinking soda or anything artificially sweetened.

At first it was dreadful – well that is a bit dramatically – but you get the point.
Nothing tasted right and I thought that I would forever miss the sweet life.
But then something strange happened: My taste buds grew so much more sensitive.
Simple things like bananas suddenly were so much sweeter, so much tastier than usual.
I discovered that my coffee and tea - which I thought were quite bitter and unpleasant in the beginning, had more flavor than I ever experienced.

Taking sugar out of my diet didn’t mean not enjoying sweetness anymore but contrary it meant enjoying it more and deeper than before.
So I started thinking: What about the other senses?
We are being bombarded, over stimulated with everything from louder music and ever increasing complex and faster video effects to over exposure to sex and violence.

There is a continuous assault on our senses and emotions.
But are we getting more out of this “over exposure” or are we getting less?
Is more, more or is more, less?
And then, if that is so – Does it mean that less is more?