Gustatory types
- From: "Lance" <LanceGary@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 28 Mar 2006 05:26:03 -0800
Sweet is relative, taste bud researcher says
Genetic differences divide humans into 3 categories
Mike Toner - Staff
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
They're right there on the tip of your tongue --- taste buds.
Scientists are learning that how many of those little fungiform
papillae you have --- and how they work --- may play a role in whether
you develop cancer, heart disease or diabetes.
"We live in different taste worlds and how things taste has a lot to do
with whether we eat them or not," Yale University psychologist Linda
Bartoshuk told the American Chemical Society Monday in Atlanta.
Although it was once thought that tastes for food were acquired,
scientists now know that the world of taste is divided, partly by
genetic differences, into three parts: super-tasters, nontasters, and
everyone else.
Super-tasters have about six times as many taste buds as nontasters,
and scientists are beginning to learn how differences in their
perception of taste, especially of fats and sweets, can effect an diet
and health.
"Super-tasters experience all tastes two to three times more intensely
that the rest of us," says Bartoshuk. "Because of that intensity, they
tend not to like fat, and they don't eat as much of it. They also tend
to avoid highly salted foods. Not surprisingly, they are less likely to
be obese and more likely to have lower rates of cardiovascular
disease."
Because super-tasters also perceive sweetness more intensely, they are
less likely to crave highly sweetened food and beverages. Less sugar
means fewer calories, less weight, and a reduced risk of diabetes.
Surveys show that chefs tend to be super-tasters. Researchers aren't
sure why, but it also appears that women are more likely to be
super-tasters than men. And Asians, African-Americans and Hispanics are
more likely to taste more intensely than other groups.
But it's not all peaches and sweet cream for people with overactive
taste buds. Because they are also super-sensitive to bitterness, they
tend to them shun bitter tasting things that can be good for them, like
grapefruit juice, coffee and green tea.
And the proximity of the tongue's pain receptors to their densely
packed taste buds also make them more sensitive to the chili peppers
and hot sauce.
"Super-tasters also tend not to like fruits and vegetables containing
flavinoids, compounds which they perceive as bitter, so they may face
higher rates of diet-related cancers," Bartoshuk says. "One study
showed that super-tasters over the age of 65 had higher rates of the
kind of polyps that have been linked to colon cancer."
Bartoshuk says less sensitivity to taste doesn't impede someone's
ability to enjoy food. She counts herself among the 25 percent of the
population classified as a "nontasters" but she says she enjoys the
same food most people do.
"We all get pleasure from food," she says. "People like me just taste
things less intensely. I never passed up anything in my life because it
was too sweet."
Less sensitive taste perception, she contends, is comparable to seeing
the world in subtle pastels, instead of neon --- different but still
pleasurable.
Even super-tasters sometimes get a chance to find out what life is like
at the other end of the taste continuum.
Researchers have identified a wide range of factors that can
temporarily or permanently impair a person's sense of taste, including
dental work, ear infections, head injury, chemotherapy and the
consumption of antibiotics.
Bartoshuk's research is being watched closely by the food and beverage
industry, especially by companies that use artificial sweeteners.
Nontasters, for instance, who needs lots of sugar to taste its
sweetness, tend to look on artificially sweetened soft drinks as not
sweet enough. Super-tasters may find the same level of sweetener in a
drink too strong.
"We are aware of these differences," says Grant DuBois, a Coca-Cola Co.
chemist who organized the chemical society symposium on the science of
taste. "But we are a company that develops products the average
consumer likes. There's not much we can do to please the two extremes."
.
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