A person never having artificial sweetners will associate sweetness with calories and becomes sated. If instead you consume no calorie sweeetners, the brain is tricked perhaps a few times but learns that sweetness may or may not contain calories. Consequently, the sated feeling goes away for both real and artificial sweetners.

If you become dehydrated and guzzle a glass or two of water in front of your kitchen sink, your brain quickly tells you everything's fine, put the glass down. The thing is, the water hasn't had time to enter your blood stream or cells. Your still dehydrated, but your brain says you've done what you needed to do and you soon won't be. I think that tends to happen the same way with food. It's not so much the volume of what's in your stomach, but the calories your brain thinks are there.

Does this sound valid to anyone?

hln

I'll have to give it a whirl sometime. Still, I often like fairly inexpensive pinor noirs (they're hard to find these days, as demand is high) and find very expensive ones dreadful (or not tasting like a pinot). Often, a change in vintage for a wine I expect to like makes a world of difference.

Now, I doubt whether I'd consistently differentiate a pinot from a shiraz, since the range of both is fairly wide, but I think I'd be fairly consistent in a bimodal "like" versus "don't like" system.

Its like finance. Spend less than you earn and you will keep yourself out of financial troubles. If you make a million a year and are spending more than a million, it will catch up to you. If you are making 25K a year and spend less than 25K, you will keep your head above water. Likewise with food, eat as much as your body uses up. If you eat more, cut back. If you eat less, have a second helping. It really isn't rocket science, but it does take a bit of self discipline.

As far as taste, I remember a blind taste test of beers we conducted in college using 6 brands we happened to have around the apartment. The only beer that was consistently ranked was the generic beer at #6. All the rest were all over the place and no one put their favorite beer at the top. Before you pat yourself on the back to much about your discriminating palate for wine, try doing a blind taste test. Maybe you will pick each wine, but I bet you are surprised. How surprised (e.g. Merlot for Chardonnay) I'm not sure, but I bet your taste rankings wouldn't match your pre-test rankings based solely on the unopened bottle.