Salty, sweet, sour, and bitter are the 4 basic tastes. Recently we heard about umami (protein based flavors such as meat, cheese, broth). The taste that’s even more recent, and was found by researchers at Deakin University and University of Adelaide, is fat.
The Australian university researchers said that they built their research based on research that had been done in the US that used animals to find the taste for fat. They found that different people had different degrees of sensitivity to the taste of fat. Some were very sensitive while some were barely sensitive.
“Interestingly, we also found that those with a high sensitivity to the taste of fat consumed less fatty foods and had lower BMIs (body-mass indices) than those with lower sensitivity,” said Russell Keast, a researcher at Deakin University.
They also believe that, with fat being so abundant in our foods today that we may become desensitized to the taste of it eventually, therefore making it easier for some people to over eat foods that have a lot of fat.
When you eat food that has fat in it, can you taste the fat? How easy or difficult is it for you to taste the fat? Can you taste the difference in the types of fat like oil or the skin on chicken? What about the other tastes? Are those easier for your taste buds to pick up on?
Photo by SixyBeast
Sat, Apr 17, 2010
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