The Original Tu B’Shvat Seder: 'Pri Etz Hadar' and What Our Senses Tell Us "Naturally"

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The ritual I did with different kinds of fruits on the first day of class comes a "seder" for Tu B'Shvat ("The 15th of Sh'vat" - the Jewish New Year for the Trees).  I wrote a short description of this text in the Jewish food blog The Jew and the Carrot here:
The Original Tu B’Shvat Seder: 'Pri Etz Hadar'
According to what we've read in Diane Ackerman's Natural History of The Senses, everything we know about the world we live in is mediated to us through our senses.  But what in particular do are senses "tell" us that is so important to know? Our senses alert us to what is food, who would be a good mate, and predators that might be out to get us. Our senses give us pleasurable rewards presumably for what is good for us to smell, touch, taste, hear, and see. And we experience disgust or pain for things that are presumably bad for us.

However, it's also possible that not everything that feels pleasurable to us is always good for us - we can eat too much sugar, salt, and fat; nor is pain or disgust always bad for us.  Pain in particular often makes us more attentive to things we really need to attend to, like sunburn, or other injuries to our bodies. If this is
the case, what do you think the specific sensations we were directed to experience when we ate the three different kinds of fruit were "telling" us? In other words, if we bump our teeth against the hard pit beneath the sweet, chewy date or salty, slick olive, hear the crack and break back the shells of the walnut and pistachios to get at the "meat" inside, or enjoy the aroma and taste of the sliced apple with virtually no resistance to our fingers, teeth, and tongue at all - have we learned something about our relationship to the world?  Even apart from the specific Jewish meanings that the stories I told you attached to the experiences of eating fruits with or without inedible rinds and seeds?

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