Tea or coffee? The answer could be genetic

PARIS – In a new research on how genetic factors determine taste, scientists now believe that they know why some humans prefer coffee while others opt for tea.

An article published this week in Nature Scientific Reports found that people who are genetically predisposed to love the most bitter tastes generally choose coffee because of its higher content of tart caffeine.

But especially for tea drinkers around the world, it does not correct them.

As humans evolved, we developed the ability to detect bitterness as a natural alert system to protect the body from harmful substances.

From the point of view of evolution, we should want to spit this Americano directly into the sink.

But test participants who were genetically more sensitive to the bitter taste of caffeine were more likely to prefer coffee to tea and more likely to drink more.

"You would expect people who are particularly sensitive to the bitter taste of caffeine to drink less coffee," said Marilyn Cornelis, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine.

"The opposite results of our study suggest that coffee consumers acquire a taste or ability to detect caffeine because of the learned positive reinforcement caused by caffeine."

Thus, people genetically pre-programmed to love the bitterness of coffee learn to associate "good things," said Cornelis.

In the study of more than 400,000 men and women in the UK, researchers also found that people sensitive to the bitter flavors of quinine and a taste related to plant compounds were more likely to avoid coffee at home. profit from its more sweet counterpart, tea.

Liang-Dar Hwang of the Diamantina Institute at the University of Queensland, who co-authored the study, told AFP that the fact that some people prefer coffee showed that everyday experiences could go beyond trends genetic taste.

"The perception of bitter taste depends not only on genetics but also on environmental factors," he said.

"Even though humans naturally hate bitterness, we can learn to love or savor bitter-tasting foods after being exposed to environmental factors."

Although coffee lovers are essentially challenging the evolution, there is another possible benefit to enjoying your latte.

Hwang said that coffee drinkers were genetically less sensitive to bitterness than tea drinkers, making them "less likely to hate other bitter-tasting foods" such as green leafy vegetables.