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According to a new study, people sensitive to the bitterness of caffeine tend to drink more coffee than others, while people sensitive to bitter flavors such as quinine drink less coffee.
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Dimitri Otis / Getty Images
According to a new study, people sensitive to the bitterness of caffeine tend to drink more coffee than others, while people sensitive to bitter flavors such as quinine drink less coffee.
Dimitri Otis / Getty Images
If you hold your nose and take a sip of coffee, what you will taste is mainly a bitter liquid. Much of the enjoyment of coffee comes from its aroma.
But a new study suggests that people sensitive to this bitter taste play a role in the amount of coffee they drink. And while this seems counter-intuitive, the study shows that the more you are sensitive to the bitter taste of coffee, the more you tend to drink it.
A team of researchers conducted their analysis using data stored in a biobank called UK Biobank. More than 500,000 people have provided blood, urine and saliva samples to the biobank, which scientists can use to answer a variety of research questions. Volunteers also completed questionnaires asking various health questions, including the amount of coffee consumed.
Part of what determines our sensitivity to bitter substances is determined by the genes we inherited from our parents. Researchers have used genetic analysis of biobank samples to find people more or less sensitive to three bitter substances: caffeine, quinine (a tonic water) and a chemical called propylthiouracil which is frequently used in genetic tests of the bitter compounds.
Next, they asked whether people who were sensitive to one or more of these substances drank more or less coffee than non-susceptible people. To the researchers' surprise, people who are more sensitive to caffeine reported an increase in coffee consumption compared to less sensitive people.
The result was limited to the bitterness of caffeine. People who are sensitive to quinine and propylthiouracil – which are not coffee – tend to drink less coffee.
The effect of increasing sensitivity to caffeine was low: it only accounted for about two extra tablespoons of coffee per day. But by analyzing as many samples, the researchers were able to detect such differences, however small.
How to explain these results? Marylin Cornelis, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, says people could "learn to associate this bitter taste with the stimulation that coffee can provide." In other words, they become addicted to buzz.
Although taste plays some role in people's coffee consumption, Cornelis says that people's ability to break down caffeine and chase it away from the body is a better indicator of their consumption. People whose genes facilitate the breakdown of caffeine tend to drink more coffee. Once again, their explanation seems to be their desire to stay totally caffeinated.
And it turns out that those who drink two or three cups a day might as well live longer.
Researchers at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia, also participated in the study. He appears in the newspaper Scientific reports.
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