If that Snickers bar you're eating seems a bit less sweet this time of year you might be experiencing a symptom of seasonal affective disorder, or winter depression, that strikes millions of people during the sunlight-scarce months. It turns out that SAD dampens not only your mood but also your taste buds.
Paul Arbisi, a clinical psychologist at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center, found that SAD sufferers often crave carbohydrates. Logical because carbo-rich foods can spark the production of serotonin, a mood-enhancing neurotransmitter often in short supply in depressed brains. Arbisi figured that the taste buds of such people might become more sugar-sensitive, serving as an additional signal to guide us toward those serotonin-boosting carbohydrates.
Instead, Arbisi found that people with SAD are less able to detect sweetness than nondepressed individuals. (Their taste buds do return to normal when warmer weather arrives.) An explanation for this unexpected discovery, however, is proving as elusive as the winter sun. It may simply be that the disorder blunts taste buds indiscriminately: bitter and sour flavors become muted as well. Then there's the puzzling finding that while exposing SAD patients to bright light improves their mood, their deadened taste buds stay out of commission until spring.
