The Liking for Coffee

We all love coffee. Don’t we? There are various types and methods by which coffee is consumed such as Espresso (Short Black); Double Espresso (Doppio); Short Macchiato; Long Macchiato; Ristretto; Long Black (Americano); Café Latte; Cappuccino etc. The taste of coffee is naturally bitter. Bitterness is a natural warning system to protect the body from harmful substances.

By evolutionary logic, we should want to spit it out. A new study concerning coffee has been conducted by the Northwestern Medicine and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia. The research stated that higher is the sensitivity of people for the bitter taste coffee, greater is their liking for coffee. The reason behind this addiction is a genetic variant. It is expected that the people who are particularly sensitive to the bitter taste of caffeine, would consume less coffee. But the reality is different. It is just the opposite. The coffee consumers develop a taste for it due to the learned positive reinforcement that is caused by caffeine. It is found that those who can taste the bitterness of coffee more develop an ability of associating it with good things more. They experience a sense of joy accompanied by satisfaction upon the consumption of coffee. The study also revealed that those who are more sensitive to the bitter flavors of quinine and of PROP, a synthetic taste related to the compounds in cruciferous vegetables, also avoided coffee. The scientists applied Mendelian randomization, which is a technique commonly used in disease epidemiology, in order to test the causal relationship between bitter taste and beverage consumption in over 400,000 men and women in the United Kingdom. The genetic variants linked to caffeine, quinine and PROP perception were initially associated with genome-wide analysis of solution taste-ratings collected from Australian twins. These genetic variants were later tested for associations with self-reported consumption of coffee, tea and alcohol in the current study.Cornelis stated that taste is one thing that has been studied for a long time now, it is one of the senses. Every now and then attempts are being made to study it from a biological standpoint.

By:  Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181115104603.htm