Saliva contains enzymes that begin the digestion process, and it also helps us to taste food. Scientists recently discovered that proteins in saliva go beyond helping us taste food to actually influencing how the food tastes, which in turn could influence what foods people willingly choose to eat.
Proteins released by salivary glands interact with taste receptors in the mouth and flavor compounds in foods. Some are thought to impart astringent taste sensations that people might experience when eating foods such as red wine and certain types of chocolate. Research presented during the 256th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society explained how scientists have gained valuable insights into interactions of the salivary proteins and food.
“We found that feeding people chocolate milk, which contained polyphenols (the healthy, but nasty tasting stuff in chocolate), changed the makeup of their saliva,” says Cordelia A. Running, assistant professor of nutrition science and food science at Purdue University. “Some of the changes could mean that these polyphenols might taste less nasty in the long run. This could explain why some people acquire tastes for certain foods, but also could be a useful message for people: that maybe healthy food doesn’t have to taste bad—at least not forever.”
Put simply, the data suggest that regular exposure can make bitter foods more acceptable, says Running’s fellow researcher, Ann-Marie Torregrossa, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo. “If someone regularly eats a diet with lots of plants, those plants likely taste better to them than someone new to the diet,” says Torregrossa. “If a person is switching to a plant heavy diet and is struggling with the taste, it may be important to understand that it will likely get better.”
The current research grew out of previous studies that examined diet and salivary proteins in rats. In that research, scientists found that diet alters the salivary protein profile (called the induction phase) and then the salivary proteins alter the taste of food, i.e., make the bitter tastes more acceptable (called the acceptance phase), explains Torregrossa. “We have examined the acceptance phase by looking at both the acceptability of a bitter solution after salivary proteins have been altered and by looking at the firing of one of the taste nerves when the bitter is paired with salivary proteins from a donor animal. In both cases having the right salivary protein profile made the bitter appear less concentrated.”
The researchers hope that what they learned may one day help consumers maintain a healthier diet. “As we figure out how exactly these proteins in spit are related to the flavor, we might be able to figure out ways to change people’s spit to make healthy food taste better, or we might be able to figure out how to use food ingredients to mimic the functions of those proteins in spit, so that the food itself helps those flavors taste better,” says Running.
Source: IFT
