Posted on 08/02/2019 1:53:01 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
Introducing plant-based foods to a diet is a common-sense approach to healthy eating, but many people don't like the taste of vegetables, bitter greens, in particular.
But give that broccoli a chance.
Doing so won't just change your mind; it will actually change the taste of those foods, according to a new study.
What sounds at first like a culinary parlor trick is actually a scientific matter based on specific proteins found in saliva. These proteins affect the sense of taste, and diet composition, at least in part, determines those proteins.
Saliva is a complex fluid containing around 1,000 specific proteins. Identifying all the players is a work in progress, but everything we eat is dissolved in saliva before it interacts with taste receptor cells and all these proteins are candidates for influencing stimuli before food is tasted.
"What you eat creates the signature in your salivary proteome, and those proteins modulate your sense of taste," says Ann-Marie Torregrossa, an assistant professor.
How much repeated exposure? Give me a number.
"Our data doesn't provide a number, such as 12 servings of broccoli, however, for people who avoid these foods because of their bitterness, but would like them in their diet, they should know their taste will eventually change."
"Trying to convince someone that a salad tastes great isn't going to work because to that person it doesn't taste great. Understanding with taste that we're dealing with something that's moveable is significant."
"Once these proteins are on board the bitter tastes like water. It's gone."
"The variation around sweets is very small," she says. "Nearly everyone likes a cupcake, but the variation around liking broccoli is enormous.
"This research helps explain why that variation with bitter food exists and how we can get more people to eat broccoli instead of cupcakes."
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
I love a very cilantroey salsa. My Italian M in law finds cilantro repulsive. One time she was making a big pot of sauce & had accidentally gotten cilantro & put it in. She threw the whole pot out!
I do not think there is a way to make Brussels sprouts edible.
I am still traumatized by the time when I was about ten and my mother served Brussels sprouts. Oh, I thought they were adorable tiny cabbages. Then I tasted one. Definitely not cabbage; it was a cruel joke from which I will never recover.
I like broccoli, too.
There’s a chemical in it that tastes horrible to a subset of the population.
Other foods have similar phenomena.
MSG, the salt, to some people tastes sweet. Others taste it as salty.
Cilantro tastes bad, or even soapy to some people.
“This says they will, when eating it enough times.
It seems bizarre.”
Yes. It’s a good question. I’m not sure what they’re saying applies to people who gave this strong aversion to it.
Or maybe that us who they’re talking about. I’m not sure.
If the latter, I would be skeptical.
Well hell, shred a shirt cardboard, saute that with sliced bacon and bacon grease and you've got a real nice treat.
Grated parmesan cheese is the answer to neutralizing the bitterness of any green veggie. Delicious on brussels sprouts, broccoli, steamed spinach, etc. Also try a squirt of lemon juice and/or a dab of butter. Heaven.
The clerks at the store never can tell cilantro from Italian parsley.
Cilantro is an actual gene that determines whether it tastes like yummy savory-spice, or like soap.
Definitely soap. ;<)
“If we can convince people to try broccoli, greens and bitter foods, they should know that with repeated exposure, they’ll taste better once they regulate these proteins”
hogwash. there’s a genetic reason most people have an aversion to bitter foods: it’s because most poisons taste bitter ... avoiding bitter foods is a builtin survival mechanism developed over many hundreds of thousands of years ...
Kind of like having to “develop a taste” for Scotch....
Tossed with olive oil, s&p, roasted at 400 till nice and crisp on the outside, they are delish......
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