Entries Tagged 'Food Science' ↓

Do you love potato chips and pizza but shun vegetables? Your mother may be to blame for your bad eating habits. If she regularly succumbed to cravings to the exclusion of healthy foods, it may have impacted your early palate.

A new study from Philadelphia’s Monell Chemical Senses Center suggests that children adopt their mothers’ food preferences through the flavors found in her breast milk and amniotic fluid; if mothers want their babies to eat vegetables, especially bitter green vegetables, they need opportunities to taste these foods first.

In the study, 46 pregnant women were assigned to one of three groups. Women in the first group drank carrot juice during the third trimester of pregnancy and water while breastfeeding; the second group did the opposite; and the third group drank only water throughout.

Infants who were repeatedly exposed to carrot flavoring ate an average of three times more carrot-flavored cereal than did infants whose mothers drank only water.

Mother’s milk is arguably the first flavor experience a child is exposed to, offering a taste of their culture even before birth. “It’s a beautiful system,” says Julie Manella, the study’s author, “Infants learn what foods are safe by flavor cues in the amniotic fluid and mother’s milk.”

You can increase a person’s enjoyment of wine simply by increasing its price, so says a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Antonio Rangel, who led the study, asked 21 volunteers to sample five different bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon. The blind taste test offered no information about the wine other than its price.

The result?

Subjects ranked a $45 wine higher than the same wine priced at $5. They ranked a different wine priced at $90 higher than the same wine priced at $10.

In addition to collecting ratings of the wines, Rangel scanned the subjects’ brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI).

He found that when sampling a higher priced wine, more blood and oxygen was sent to the medial orbitofrontal cortex - an area of the brain believed to encode the pleasures related to taste.

Says Rengel, “If you believe that the experience is better, even though it’s the same wine, the rewards center of the brain encodes it as feeling better. People’s beliefs about the quality of a wine affect how well it tastes for the brain.”

In other words, spending more money on wine may actually result in greater pleasure and enjoyment.

Imagine a future where the most nutritious foods, the same foods you’ve always despised, were chemically engineered to taste delicious. Likewise, imagine if the most sinful foods – ice cream, pop or potato chips – were engineered to taste great without the use of excess sugar, sodium or MSG.

The future is closer than you think. In recent years, as we have unraveled the secrets of the human genome, most of the molecular machinery responsible for taste sensation has been uncovered. Continue reading →

Be it Jay-Lo or Beyonce, big butts are all the rage. While waif-like models continue to hold sway in the fashion industry, most men will readily admit their bootilicious leanings. Continue reading →

Supertasters experience food differently than non-tasters. Some have compared being a supertaster to tasting in neon - while the less fortunate non-tasters experience food in black and white.

There have been numerous scientific studies examining the impact of supertaster genes on diet and health, but there has yet to be a study examining a supertaster’s affinity for food and how that influences one’s lifestyle. It is my hypothesis that today’s passionate food lovers grew up to appreciate food only because they inherited supertaster genes.

Supertaster Test – a site that offers a test to determine if you are a supertaster – has been kind enough to sponsor a web wide taste test. As a survey population I have chosen food bloggers, perhaps the most passionate food lovers.

The study will examine food bloggers’ propensity for carrying the supertaster gene. In addition, the study will examine variations in sex and ethnicity among food bloggers.

If you are a food blogger and wish to receive a supertaster test kit – please complete this form. The first one-hundred (U.S. Based) food bloggers who sign up will receive a Supertaster Test free of charge. Results of the study will be published here in the coming weeks.

Starting around age 60, even healthy people will begin to experience a decline in their sense of taste. The decline is more pronounced by age 70 when the tongue’s taste buds become less sensitive and the nerves in the nose that register smell require greater stimulation. Scientists estimate that a person will lose 20% to 60% of their taste buds by the time they reach their golden years. Continue reading →