Taste test

8220;Why do we learn to like foods? When they8217;re paired with something our brains are programmed to see as good,8221; says Dr. Linda Bartoshuk of the University of Florida, a specialist in the genetics of human taste.

Though brains are programmed to want fat, it8217;s probably an evolutionary hangover from times of scarcity. But what8217;s necessary for survival isn8217;t all the brain likes.

Researchers from the University of Michigan just found out that eating something tasty can spark brain cells that sense actual pleasure to start firing rapidly. More provocative, how intensely people sense different flavors seems to affect how healthy they are. Are you among the 8220;supertasters,8221; people who shun vegetables because they find them more bitter than others?

Supertasters may be more at risk of developing colon cancer as a result, says a recent University of Connecticut study. Their research that sheds light on more than how we eat at food-rich holidays. If scientists can prove those connections, it would be empowering information for people struggling to eat better the year-round.

8220;People pile a lot of guilt on themselves,8221; says Connecticut8217;s Dr Valerie Duffy, who is leading research into the links between inborn 8220;preference palates8221; and health.

8220;We know oral sensation varies,8221; she adds. 8220;Instead of making one dietary recommendation for all, can we individualise it for what people like to eat?8221;

One in four people is what scientists call a supertaster, born with extra taste buds. 8220;They live in a neon taste world,8221; as Bartoshuk puts it.

They find some vegetables horribly bitter, and hate the texture. They get more burn from chili peppers, and perceive more sweetness than other people. Nor do they care for fat. They tend to be skinny because they8217;re such picky eaters.

Scientists came up with the name because these people give an extreme 8220;yuck!8221; when given a certain bitter chemical widely used in taste research _ a chemical that certain other people, dubbed nontasters, can8217;t even detect.

Those nontasters make up another quarter of the population. They like veggies, but unfortunately prefer heart-clogging fat, too, along with sweets and alcohol.

Everybody else falls somewhere in-between.

The good news: You can train your taste buds. The variety of foods you ate as a child, and the emotional connections to certain foods, are more important than biology in determining food preferences, Bartoshuk says. You may trick taste buds, too, by covering the bitter taste of veggies with sugar. And remember, taste dulls with age 8212; so the vegetables you hated at 20, you may like at 50.

But taste starts before a food actually touches the tongue. Even more important than sniffing its aroma is chewing, which releases vapors up the back of the nose. You think you8217;re tasting a flavor that really you8217;re unconsciously smelling. It8217;s called retronasal olfaction, and it sends flavor information along a different, more sensitive brain pathway than traditional sniffing does.

The brain, meanwhile, is busy trying to regulate competing signals from stomach hormones that say 8220;I8217;m full8221; with the yum factor.

Michigan researchers recently implanted electrodes into the brains of rats to track a pleasure-sensing region called the ventral pallidum. That region8217;s cells fired in a frenzy when the rats ate a flavor, sweet or salt, that they craved, but slowly stopped as the rats got tired of eating the same old thing.

People have the same brain region, and Michigan psychologist Kent Berridge says it8217;s in full swing on festive seasons.

8220;When you sit down and start eating, that8217;s when the firing8217;s most intense and everything tastes delicious, more delicious than it8217;s going to taste at any moment thereafter,8221; he explains. 8220;At the end, there are only a couple of things _ like the dessert _ that are going to make it fire again.8221;