Designer taste buds

[beetiger]

Last week, when a colleague passed this article on bitter blockers on to me, I got the idea of writing a long fantasia here on the nature of bitterness. But today, via a trip to the Word Spy that postvixen sent me on, I realized the topic was hot, and I'd better get to it soon, even if I'm not quite in top form at the end of a workday.

One of the dramitic things I learned in my undergrad studies of sensory science was that bitter is a basic taste recognized across the board, and that the natural reaction to it is very stereotyped: sticking out the tongue as if to dislodge the offending substance. Adults and infants from all ethnic backgrounds and cultures do it, even if they are severely brain-damaged; even decerebrate cats do it. This makes sense, as bitter = poisonous, at least as a default. But many of our culture's most beloved tastes are also based on bitterness: coffee, tea, and tonic water and dark chocolate all have bitter as a core component, as do the taste of certain nuts and exotic greens. These tastes are almost always acquired, and considered sophisticated, as if we are civilized enough to resist sticking our tongues out.

People are definitely already differentially sensitive to bitter, though. Some people are "Supertasters", people who can taste the chemicals phenylthiocarbamide(PTC) or 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) at low concentrations, which is correlated with a genetic variation that also causes a higher than average density of taste buds. Some supertasters are actually picky eaters, finding spicy or bitter foods "too strong"; but some, perhaps those of us who are also thrill seekers, crave those intense sensations anyway.

The interesting thing about this chemical is that it blocks the bitter taste at the input level, sort of parallel to the way that artificial sweeteners hyperstimulate the taste buds, but in reverse. So it's really affecting the taster, rather than the food. It's sure to be useful to make medications palatable, and I'll bet it ends up in the foodstream as well before long.

However, I reserve the right to stick my tongue out anyway.

Comments

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

There are really two components to the "flavor" of chiles: the actual flavor, which is bitter and somewhat sour, and the heat/pain reaction, which actually comes not through the taste buds themselves but through the nerves that surround them. You probably enjoy the heat sensation.

I remember hearing a talk at a food conference once in which they gave Mexican people food spiced with chiles, and food with heat calibrated to the same Scoville units of heat, but without chile flavor at all. The former was seen as pleasant, the latter as too hot and unpleasant. So it's a package deal overall.