Many people do not like the taste of vegetables, especially bitter ones. But give broccoli a chance. This will not only make you change your mind; it will actually change the taste of those foods, according to a new study. What initially sounds like a culinary trick is actually a scientific matter based on specific proteins in saliva. These proteins influence the sense of taste and the nutritional composition, at least partly.
Saliva is a complex fluid that contains about 1,000 specific proteins. Identifying all players is a work in progress, but everything we eat is dissolved in saliva before interacting with taste receptor cells and all of these proteins are candidates for influencing stimuli before food is tasted.
“What you eat creates the signature in your salivary proteome, and those proteins modulate your sense of taste,” says the researcher. “We have shown in previous work that changing your diet changes which proteins are in your saliva. Now we show that the proteins in your saliva change your taste.”
"If we can convince people to try broccoli, greens and bitter foods, they should know that they taste better with repeated exposure if they regulate these proteins," says the researcher.
How much repeated exposure? Give me a number.
“Our data does not provide a number, such as 12 servings of broccoli, for people who avoid these foods because of their bitterness, but would like to include them in their diet, they should know that their taste will eventually change.”
