Sweet Tooth? Your Saliva May Hold the Key

Saliva is crucial for tasting and digesting food, but scientists have now found that it may have another, more subtle role. Salivary proteins could be part of a feedback loop that influences how food tastes to people — and by extension, what foods they’re willing to eat. The researchers hope that, one day, their findings could help consumers stick to a healthier diet. They will present their results today at the 256th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world’s largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 10,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics. Many healthy foods — like broccoli and dark chocolate — taste bitter, Cordelia A. Running, Ph.D., says. She set out to see if eating bitter foods would help people overcome an aversion to bitter compounds. Thus, they could eat more of these healthy foods without cringing. “By changing your diet, you might be able to change your flavor experience of foods that at one point tasted nasty to you,” she says. While saliva consists almost entirely of water, it also contains thousands of proteins released by salivary glands. Some of these proteins are thought to bind to flavor compounds in food and also to taste receptor cells in the mouth. Certain proteins may be responsible for the astringent sensations, such as dryness and roughness, that develop when eating some chocolates, red wine and other foods. “If we can change the expression of these proteins, maybe we can make the ‘bad’ flavors like bitterness and astringency weaker,” says Running, who is based at Purdue University and is the principal investigator of the study. https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/sweet-tooth-your-saliva-may-hold-the-key-307855?utm_campaign=Newsletter_TN_BreakingScienceNews&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=65336997&_hsenc=p2ANqtz---7S--OWx8QZqjQbvWWIcPV5cUeiyfmip2zN-vU4kmWJtl_DJUpzyC_Gq9exFJPicFV6Aw_ximqt8rPHIJKthUsrIinQ&_hsmi=65336998