If You Thought You Could Taste Fat – You Were Right • Mirror Daily

In case you didn’t know this was bad, here’s some new evidence.

A new study may have just confirmed what you probably knew all along. If you thought you could taste fat – you were right! It appears that besides the usual tastes – sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or the unusual one – umami, there’s this new, strange one.

Commonsensical as it may seem, fat was not an already acknowledged taste. Yes, your parents may have said that you could taste that unhealthy fat on your favorite strip of fired bacon, yet you never heeded their advice, since, hey, your biology professor never said that, so what do they know, right?

Well apparently, they were right.

Purdue University researchers dubbed the new fatty flavor taste as “oleogustus.” How did they find the fat bud? Well, they conducted a little experiment – they put a small group of people in a room, they gave nose clips to them and then fed them concentrated samples of each taste. The subjects had to then sort the samples they were given into each taste, as well as a category which was dubbed blank.

The samples fed to the subjects had also been altered so that there was no difference in texture. So no smell, the same texture, but different tastes.

The results showed 64% of the people who had tasted fat recognized it. The subjects then said that of the fatty foods, those with low-fat tasted very close to sour, while those with high-fat concentrations were extremely irritating and repugnant.

Think eating cooking oil. That’s bad. Now stop thinking about it.

This research could help with the lowering of cardiac risk in people, as a high level of triglycerides, as is found in fat foods, leads to a higher dangers for your hear. The understanding of the way in which we can taste fat can lead us to understanding how we metabolize this element.

The experiment also pointed out that people who don’t taste fat as being so different from other tastes have a higher probability of developing obesity due to overeating. The study highlighted the fact that tasting fat has a direct link with knowing when to stop eating, as it is the element that gives you the “full” feeling.

This sixth taste is particularly promising as it will allow people to further understand how our bodies work. That’s if they didn’t already know that too much fat is bad for you. They will now be able to adapt their diets accordingly. And maybe lay off that butter-fried bacon, yes?

Image source: staticflickr.com

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Melissa Gansler

Melissa calls herself Poet, essayist, and naturalist. Graduated from the University of Michigan, Melissa holds a degree in Literature. Besides English, she can also speak Chinese, German, French.