Taste, not smell, of fatty foods lures eaters
 

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Dec 03 (Reuters) - It's something in the taste, not the smell, of fat that lures people to rich foods, a Purdue University scientist said on Monday.

Wearing nose plugs, study participants given a taste, but not a whiff, of cream cheese and crackers stimulated an immediate rise in their blood fat levels, while those given a sniff but not a taste did not show a rise.

"This tells us that taste is the stimulus that causes the rise in blood fat levels. The taste, and not the smell, is what the body is responding to," Richard Mattes, a Purdue professor of foods and nutrition, said in a statement summarizing findings he published in the journal Physiology & Behavior.

Experiments with rats and mice also show they preferred fatty foods, even when their olfactory sense was short-circuited.

Fat has been thought of as a tasteless "flavor carrier" that could deliver tasty compounds derived from other parts of food, and as a food component that provided texture.

But if Mattes' fat findings hold up, science may have to include it in the list of five flavors human palates can detect: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and "umami," which is evoked by monosodium glutamate (MSG) in foods.

Our physiological response to the taste of fat may explain another mystery: Why don't fat-free foods taste as good?

"I wonder if the less-than-perfect performance of current fat replacers may be due to a lack of understanding of all mechanisms for fat perception," Mattes said.

http://www.reutershealth.com/archiv...203elin030.html

Hmmm ... this can't possibly mean that food scientists will acknowledge the need for fats in the diet. Rather, I suspect .. this discovery will lead to the development of more chemicals and fake fats to put in processed foods, to lure the paying public with the promise of "all the taste with none of the fat". Or worse, they'll try to develop some drug to block these fat-taste receptors -- then peddle them as the newest great diet-drug along with Xenical.

Having too LOW blood fat levels is associated with as many health risks as having too high.

Doreen