Dive Brief:
- A recent study from Purdue University suggests that the taste of fat is a basic taste alongside bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and umami.
- To test this, scientists had participants differentiate between the five basic tastes, adding fatty as another one of the samples. Under this study, participants had trouble differentiating between bitter, umami, and fatty.
- In a subsequent experiment, participants were asked to only differentiate between bitter, umami, and fatty. They had no trouble differentiating between the three, suggesting that fatty is another primary taste.
Dive Insight:
Before, it was thought that the taste of fat overlapped with that of umami. Knowledge of how fat interacts with taste buds can lead to better tasting food and a better understanding of fats' health implications — not to mention the potential this has for the industry in the R&D phase.
"By building a lexicon around fat and understanding its identity as a taste, it could help the food industry develop better tasting products and with more research help clinicians and public health educators better understand the health implications of oral fat exposure," said Richard Mattes, a professor of nutrition science at Purdue University.