Latest Gustation Stories
Effect most pronounced for those who do not usually like to touch things while shoppingDoes coffee in a flimsy cup taste worse than coffee in a more substantial cup? Firms such as McDonalds and Starbucks spend millions of dollars every year on disposable packaging, but a new study from the April issue of the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that trying to skimp in this area might not be worth it "“ and may negatively impact consumers' perceptions of taste and quality. In a series of...
Primer describes current understanding of human taste perception and biologyDespite the significance of taste to both human gratification and survival, a basic understanding of this primal sense is still unfolding. Taste provides both pleasure and protection. Often taken for granted, the sense of taste evaluates everything humans put into their mouths. Taste mediates recognition of a substance and the final decision process before it is either swallowed and taken into the body, or rejected as...
By Amy NortonNEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Preschoolers who are sensitive to bitter flavors may be especially likely to turn their noses up at vegetables, a new study shows.In an experiment with 65 preschool children, researchers found that those whose taste buds were particularly attuned to detecting bitterness were less likely to eat their veggies. In some cases, they balked at eating not only bitter vegetables, like broccoli and olives, but also sweeter fare like carrots and red peppers.The...
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Researchers at the University of Michigan have found a "pleasure spot" in the brains of rats that may shed light on how food translates into pleasure for humans. The spot in rats' brains makes sweet tastes more "liked" than other tastes, biopsychology researchers Susana Pecina and Kent Berridge found. The pair detailed their findings in the Dec. 14 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Sweetness by itself is merely a sensation, they note. Its pleasure...
A new study from the Monell Chemical Senses Center may shed light on why some people like salt more than others. The results suggest that a person's liking for salty taste may be related to how much they weighed when they were born. In a paper published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the Monell researchers report that individual differences in salty taste acceptance by two-month old infants are inversely related to birth weight: lighter birth weight infants show greater...
By Megan RauscherNEW YORK -- The holidays are fast approaching. You're stressed, trying to diet and tempting foods abound. It's a recipe for overeating, according to researchers who found that when rats are stressed, deprived of food and then exposed to chocolate -- they overeat."Our findings contribute to the understanding of how feeding behavior is regulated," Dr. M. Flavia Barbano from the Universite Victor Segalen, Bordeaux 2 in France told Reuters Health. "Research in this...
By Amy NortonNEW YORK -- The tongue may indeed have a taste for cheesecake, french fries and butter cookies, according to study published Tuesday.In experiments with rodents, French scientists identified a receptor on the tongue that appears to detect dietary fat. This counters the traditional view that the taste buds pick up only five basic flavors: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and "umami," -- a flavor associated with the food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG).The fact that the...
WASHINGTON -- People tend to love garlic or hate it, but few probably associate it with pain. Nonetheless, it turns out that pain-sensing nerves respond to the sulfur-based chemicals in garlic. Indeed, the same mechanism the body uses to react to the sharpness of chili peppers and hot mustards like wasabi is the one that detects garlic, according to a study in Tuesday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. David Julius of the department of cellular and molecular pharmacology at...
Researchers have found new evidence suggesting that the ability to taste bitter compounds has been strongly advantageous in human evolution. Animals rely on chemical perception, including the senses of taste and smell, for protection against the harmful compounds found in nature. It is widely believed that behavioral and dietary choices may have reduced the importance of such chemical perception in higher primates, and particularly in humans. In new work, researchers including Nicole Soranzo...
In WASHINGTON story of July 25 headlined "Why cats will never live the sweet life," please read in fourth paragraph ... Xia Li, a molecular geneticist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit research institute in Philadelphia, who helped lead the study ... instead of ... Xia Li, a molecular geneticist at Cornell University in New York, who helped lead the study ... WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cats may like ice cream, but it is not the sugary taste that appeals to them because they are...
