Scientists say they think ‘fat’ is the sixth taste

That suggests we may be programmed to like fats and dislike fatty acids.

It is often assumed that fat is a satisfying taste, but new research is proving that the opposite may be true.

To decipher if “oleogustus” could be identified by eaters the researchers conducted a small study to see if people could identify the “unique taste of fat”.

There has been a consistent recognition over the centuries of four primary taste qualities – sweet, sour, bitter and salty.

The researchers then gave subjects various concentrated samples and asked them to label each of the samples with one of the five (5) big tastes – sweet, sour, salty, bitter and unami, while also including “blank” as an option.

There’s a reason why the fat-heavy samples had such distaste, as the researchers used higher concentrations that those usually found in food; they were more similar in taste with the fat found in fermented products or cooking oils.

Non-Esterified Acids, or more commonly known free fatty acids are fat’s basic building blocks.

If further research will reinforce this finding, the discovery could be of great help to the medical community in trying to better understand obesity (and how to fight it), as well as human biology as a whole.

For their study, the experts started out by looking at fatty acids, as previous studies had already established that the human tongue can detect them on a molecular level.

(Newser) – Ponder the taste of fat for a minute. Two groups of volunteers wore nose clips and sampled a range of different taste qualities, including NEFA. The participants identified fat as having a bitter or irritating and consistently unpalatable taste. The latter evoked specific tastes distinct from the other five.

Fat is a key part of the human taste palate and it is at the same time highly responsible for making us overweight, as the majority of foods we can now find on the market hold fat variations in their composition.

It is thought that amino acids could cause this type of reaction because they are accumulate when fat breaks down and rotting food.

This is not the first study to attempt to isolate the taste of fat, according to Robin Dando, assistant professor of Food Science at Cornell University.