Does smoking marijuana make sweet things taste even sweeter? Of course it does…are you fucking kidding us. But don’t take our word for it (or Weezy’s)…rather check out some of the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and Kyushu University in Japan.
These guys discovered that endocannabinoids, those THC-like substances produced in the brain and the body that bind with cannabinoid receptors to help regulate appetite and do some other shit…act directly on taste receptors on the tongue to enhance sweet taste!
“Endocannabinoids both act in the brain to increase appetite and also modulate taste receptors on the tongue to increase the response to sweets,” said study senior author Yuzo Ninomiya, Ph.D., Professor of Oral Neuroscience in the Graduate School of Dental Sciences at Kyushu University in Japan.
Oh yeah, we should point out that all this study was performed on rats, as no stoners were harmed in these experiments. But, what’s really worth pointing out is the enhancement effect was specific ONLY for sweet taste, as endocannibinoids had NO effect on responses to sour, salty, bitter or that fucking umami flavor, whatever the hell that is. So then what happens when you get stoned and eat Sour Skittles? Well, what’s the big deal about all this anyhow?
“Our taste cells may be more involved in regulating our appetites than we had previously known,” said study author Robert Margolskee, M.D., Ph.D., a Monell molecular biologist. “Better understanding of the driving forces for eating and overeating could lead to interventions to stem the burgeoning rise in obesity and related diseases.”
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