Genetic sensitivity to the bitter taste of phenylthiocarbamide and 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) is a well-studied human trait. It has been hypothesized that this phenotype is a marker for individual differences in taste perception that influence food preferences and dietary behavior with subsequent links to body weight and chronic disease risk. Steady ...

Individual differences in the ability to detect bitter tasting compounds, such as phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) or its derivative, 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) has long been recognized as a common genetic trait. This observation has been proposed to explain some of the variability in the dietary habits of a population. Several members of the ...

In the Western world, consumers have only recently learned to discriminate the Umami taste, although they have enjoyed its contribution to the palatability of traditional dishes for centuries. The flavor enhancing properties of MSG have been scientifically investigated in European subjects. By adding MSG to such foods as soups, their ...

Objective. To investigate the effects of weight status, food type and exposure to food and non-food advertisements on children's preference for branded and non-branded foods. Design. A within-subjects, counterbalanced design with control (toy advertisement) and experimental (food advertisement) conditions. Subjects. A total of 37 school students (age: 11-13 years; weight ...

It has been clear for many years that insects use visual cues to stabilize their heading in a wind stream. Many animals track odors carried in the wind. As such, visual stabilization of upwind tracking directly aids in odor tracking. But do olfactory signals directly influence visual tracking behavior independently ...

OBJECTIVE: This cross-sectional study was designed to investigate the relationships between food preferences, food neophobia, and children's characteristics among a population-based sample of preschoolers. DESIGN: A parent-report questionnaire. SETTING: Child-care centers, kindergartens, playgroups, day nurseries, and swimming centers. SUBJECTS: 371 two- to five-year-old Australian children. OUTCOME MEASURES: Associations between food ...

The sense of taste informs the body about the quality of ingested foods. Tastant-mediated signals are generated by a rise in free intracellular calcium levels ([Ca(2+)]i) in the taste bud cells and then are transferred to the gustatory area of brain via connections between the gustatory nerves (chorda tympani and ...

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is known to enhance liking for the flavor of savory foods, but whether associations between flavors and effects of MSG lead to changes in subsequent liking and intake for the flavor alone is unclear. To test this, 32 volunteers evaluated and consumed a novel savory soup with ...

We have reported that neonatal handling leads to increased sweet food preference in adult life. Our aim was to verify if these differences in feeding behavior appear before puberty, and whether other types of intervention in periadolescence (such as exposure to toys) could interfere with sweet food consumption later in ...

Hand preferences were investigated during one unimanual action (food-reaching) and one bimanual action (mount-reaching) in a semi-free-ranging group of Sichuan snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana) in Zhouzhi National Nature Reserve, Qinling Mountains of China. Nine of 14 individuals tested on the unimanual food-reaching action and all six individuals tested on the ...

BACKGROUND: Sweet taste preferences are measured by several often correlated measures. OBJECTIVE: We examined the relative proportions of genetic and environmental effects on sweet taste preference indicators and their mutual correlations. DESIGN: A total of 663 female twins (324 complete pairs, 149 monozygous and 175 dizygous pairs) aged 17-80 y ...

Natural food odours elicit different behavioural responses in snails. The tentacle carries an olfactory organ, and it either protracts toward a stimulating carrot odour or retraces in a startle-like fashion away from a cucumber odour. The tentacle retraction to cucumber was still present after the snails were fed cucumber during ...

There is an evolutionary advantage to learning food preferences from conspecifics, as social learning allows an individual to bypass the risks associated with trial and error individual learning. The social transmission of food preferences (STFP) paradigm examines this advantage. Females in the proestrus and diestrus phases of the estrous cycle ...

To examine the effect of pregnancy on food consumption, we surveyed the recall of past experience of two groups of women, those who had been pregnant (PY, n=188) and those who never had (PN, n=111), regarding their food consumption and related dietary behaviors. The questionnaire, answered with regard to potato ...

Taste is always accompanied by tactile stimulation, but little is known about how touch interacts with taste. One exception is evidence that taste can be "referred" to nearby tactile stimulation. It was recently found (Lim J, and Green BG. 2007. The psychophysical relationship between bitter taste and burning sensation: evidence ...

The human orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) plays an important role in representing taste, flavor, and food reward. The primary role of the OFC in taste is thought to be the encoding of affective value and the computation of perceived pleasantness. The OFC also encodes retronasal olfaction and oral somatosensation. During eating, ...

Diet selection is a complex problem that animals in wildlife have to deal with daily. In their natural environment, these animals meet a great variety of foods some of which they are able and prepared to eat, yet, not all of it is eaten. In addition to the biological factors, ...

This study investigates the role of food preferences in food rejection amongst primary school children. A total of 17 children (9- and 10-year-old) took part in group discussions from which elicited their preferences from 35 photographs of different foods and dishes. They also discussed their reasons for rejecting a specific ...

The relationship between taste acuity and food neophobia, food familiarity and liking has been studied in the context of a residential weight reduction session (WRS; mean duration: 10 months) in 39 obese adolescents. Taste acuity was assessed using recognition thresholds for sucrose, citric acid, sodium chloride and 6-n propylthiouracil (PROP) ...

The relationship between food flavors and postingestive feedback enables mammalian herbivores to procure nutrients and avoid toxins within ever-changing environments. We conducted four experiments with red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) in captivity to determine the relative roles of color and flavor cues paired with negative postingestive feedback. We first conducted baseline ...

Repeated taste exposure has been used to introduce novel foods in several settings, but none of these efforts have targeted clinical populations. This study describes an intervention that combines repeated taste exposure and escape prevention in the treatment of extreme food selectivity in two children with autism. Future applications of ...

The authors investigated correlations between retrospective dream characteristics, food preferences, and eating attitudes. Graduate students (7 men, 42 women) at Santa Clara University were administered the MEGA food scale and the KJP Dream Inventory. High intake of organic food was positively correlated with reports of multiple dream factors. Conversely, high ...

Children's food preferences are strongly associated with their consumption patterns. Identifying the factors that influence preferences is therefore crucial to the development of effective interventions to improve children's diets. Perhaps the most important determinant of a child's liking for a particular food is the extent to which it is familiar. ...

OBJECTIVE: Childhood obesity is a prominent health problem that may involve early learning about tastes and the energy content of foods. We tested the hypothesis that food tastes predictive of low energy content cause overeating in young animals. RESEARCH METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Juvenile and adolescent (4- and 8-week-old) male JCR:LA-cp ...

BACKGROUND: Genetic sensitivity to the bitter taste of 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) has been reported to determine preferences for bitter, sweet, and fat-containing foods, affect dietary habits, influence body weight, and modify chronic disease risk. OBJECTIVE: To examine associations between PROP responsiveness, food choices, dietary intakes, and plasma chemistries in a clinical ...

In mammals, the hedonic aspects (good versus bad) and sensory aspects (i.e., the molecular quality) of taste are associated with different brain regions. Anatomical data argue against such a separation in the primary taste center of Drosophila larvae. Is only one aspect of taste represented or do both co-exist at ...

Twenty Thai commercial fish sauces were characterized by sensory descriptive analysis and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. The main objectives were i) to investigate the relationships between sensory attributes and NIR spectra of samples and ii) to characterize the sensory characteristics of fish sauces based on NIR data. A generic descriptive analysis ...

BACKGROUND: Humans have an innate preference for sweet taste, but the degree of liking for sweet foods varies individually. OBJECTIVE: The proportion of inherited sweet taste preference was studied. A genome-wide linkage analysis was performed to locate the underlying genetic elements in the genome. DESIGN: A total of 146 subjects ...

Differences between elderly subjects (n = 46, 61-86 years) and young subjects (n = 36, 18-25 years) in food perception and food liking were investigated. Intensity and liking ratings were assessed for custard dessert, in which flavor enrichment, textural change, and irritant addition were incorporated as strategies to compensate for ...

The availability of different forages varies across landscapes, but little is known about how proportional consumption of different foods affects food intake and the use of landscapes. The relative amounts of nutrients and plant secondary metabolites (PSM) consumed by herbivores may influence forage intake and animal fitness in landscapes dominated ...

Taste is an essential sense for detection of nutrient-rich food and avoidance of toxic substances. The Drosophila melanogaster gustatory system provides an excellent model to study taste perception and taste-elicited behaviors. "The fly" is unique in the animal kingdom with regard to available experimental tools, which include a wide repertoire ...

Cannabinoid drugs such as Delta9-THC are euphoric and rewarding, and also stimulate food intake in humans and animals. Little is known about how naturally occurring endogenous brain cannabinoids mediate pleasure from food or other natural sensory rewards. The taste reactivity paradigm measures effects of brain manipulations on affective orofacial reactions ...

BACKGROUND: Previous research suggests that adequate dietary zinc intake may be important in determining the sensory experience of food, appetite and consequently, dietary quality. The aim of this pilot study was to explore relationships between taste sensitivity and dietary zinc intake in healthy young adults (age 20-40 years: 24 male, ...

While smokers commonly report that various foods and beverages worsen or enhance the taste of cigarettes, the prevalence and diversity of these phenomena have not been studied. We administered an open-ended questionnaire to 209 smokers asking for reports of foods or beverages that worsen or enhance the taste of cigarettes. ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Important advances in our understanding of how taste, smell and somatosensation contribute to oral sensation are reviewed and the nutritional and health implications associated with variation in oral sensation are discussed. RECENT FINDINGS: Oral sensation is a central integration of taste (salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami), retronasal ...

Sour taste is the key element in the flavor profile of food acidulants. Understanding the chemistry and physiology of sour taste is critical for efficient control of flavor in the formulation of acid and acidified foods. After a brief introduction to the main applications of food acidulants, several chemical parameters ...

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to assess which factors affected the maintenance of more than 20 teeth in Japanese patients aged 80 years and older, using a life-course perspective. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The oral examination was carried out by dentists. The questionnaire asked about family background, background during ...

Despite a growing body of research investigating the origins and effects of food aversions, few research instruments have been developed to measure aversions to specific types or categories of food. Undergraduates (N = 209) responded to a series of food aversion questionnaires. The results suggest that people tend to be ...

Complementary neurophysiological recordings in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and functional neuroimaging in human subjects show that the primary taste cortex in the rostral insula and adjoining frontal operculum provides separate and combined representations of the taste, temperature and texture (including viscosity and fat texture) of food in the mouth independently ...

meso-Tetrakis(2-pyridyl)-porphyrin (2-PyP) was tetra-N-alkylated with three different alpha-bromoacetamides to generate a series of water-soluble N-alkylpyridinium porphyrins (1-3). The product mixtures showed a marked preference for the formation of the alphaalphabetabeta atropisomer. With alpha-bromo-N-n-butylacetamide, the corresponding alphaalphabetabeta 2-tetrakis (N-n-butylacetamido)-pyridyl porphyrin (2-TnBuPyP, 3) was obtained in 69% isolated yield in a single ...

Genetic variation in oral sensation presumably influences ingestive behaviors through sensations arising from foods and beverages. Here, we investigated the influence of taste phenotype [6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) bitterness, fungiform papillae (FP) density] on sweet and creamy sensations from sugar/fat mixtures. Seventy-nine subjects (43 males) reported the sweetness and creaminess of water ...

Taste expectations can influence taste evaluations. It is not known, however, whether the environmental cues that influence taste expectations--such as suggestible names and brand labels--can have a referred impact on the intake volume of companion foods. Adult diners who ordered a prix-fixe restaurant meal were given a complimentary glass of ...

The aim of the study was to determine the influence of the mother in the development of flavored-food preference in lambs. First, we demonstrated that lambs that ate flavored food in the presence of their mothers before weaning ate more of this food 1 month after weaning than lambs that ...

Conventional wisdom says that our preferences for particular tastes evolved to ensure an adequate instinctual intake of metabolic resources. Yet we discern scant taste in many vital dietary components, such as vitamins, minerals, co-factors, essential fatty acids and amino acids. We propose that taste preferences evolved to serve a secondary ...

Proboscis extension response (PER) is a taste behavior assay that has been used in flies as well as in honeybees.On the surface of the fly's mouth (labellum), there are hair-like structures called sensilla which houses taste neurons. When an attractive substance makes contact to the labellum, the fly extends its ...

Spontaneous pecking preferences toward symmetric or asymmetric stimuli were tested in newborn chicks (Gallus gallus). A preference for asymmetric patterns was found in naïve chicks (either 24 or 48 hours old), although a preference for symmetry appeared at retest after chicks had experienced standard rearing conditions (Experiments 1 and 2). ...

Refined sugars (e.g., sucrose, fructose) were absent in the diet of most people until very recently in human history. Today overconsumption of diets rich in sugars contributes together with other factors to drive the current obesity epidemic. Overconsumption of sugar-dense foods or beverages is initially motivated by the pleasure of ...

Food preferences are influenced by a number of factors such as personal experiences, cultural adaptations and perceived health benefits. Taste, however, is the most important determinant of how much a food is liked or disliked. Based on the response to bitter-tasting compounds such as phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) or 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP), individuals ...

This study establishes the reliability and validity of the Fat Preference Questionnaire, a self-administered instrument to assess preference for dietary fat. Respondents select the food which tastes better and is eaten more frequently from 19 sets of food. Each set is comprised of related foods differing in fat content. The ...

Brosnan et al. (Brosnan, S. F. Schiff, H. C. & de Waal, F. B. M. 2005 Tolerance for inequity may increase with social closeness in chimpanzees. Proc. R. Soc. B272, 253-258) found that chimpanzees showed increased levels of rejection for less-preferred food when competitors received better food than themselves and ...