Kirt: > But there is nothing completely sacred about smell and taste. For me, > garlic and liver usually smell very interesting but usually taste poor. > Other useful foods may have very little smell (grapes, fish bones, etc.) > but still taste good. And I have times when a food (bananas, sweet corn) > smelled nuetral but tasted great. In the case of the latter, they may > simply be oversweet foods, but even so they are the foods which are in our > markets, so relying exclusively on smell/taste for attractions and the > taste change for quantity can be problematic. What the solution is is an > open question--wide open...;) I agree that taste and smell are not the only senses that we should rely upon. A game I occasionally play is to feed pigeons in public squares, and watch them eat instinctively. Sometimes they don't even pay attention; sometimes they approach their beak but don't taste; sometimes they taste but don't swallow; and sometimes they eat until the "stop". So, I think that they use eyesight, smell and taste altogether. However, we humans have used visualisation for so many years that we lost the habit to use smell/taste, so relying as much as possible on smell/taste probably helps to be successful in instinctive nutrition. For the anecdote about instinctos' stools (is it another fecal obsession?), I haven't noticed any effect on my stools (and their color is normal). Maybe the problem is that instinctos who claim they use smell/taste often rely on taste change, which is a bad thing because the stop generally comes too late. IMO, smell is the most reliable sense... when the food smells something; otherwise, the sensation of fullness often comes earlier than the taste change. BTW: pigeons don't like salad. They sometimes eat mung beans, but don't like them much; they prefer wheat. But what they like most are sunflower seeds and chickpeas. They are also attracted to meat, but it's difficult to eat for them. Best wishes, Jean-Louis [log in to unmask]