Your genes make you a tea or coffee lover: study

The study showed that people more sensitive to caffeine and drinking a lot of coffee consume low amounts of tea. (Source: Pixabay)

Are you a tea or coffee? The answer may lie in your genetic predisposition to bitter taste, according to the researchers. It may be because bitterness acts as a natural warning system to protect us from harmful substances. The study, led by researchers at Northwestern University, based in the United States, and the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia, examined reactions to three bitter substances – caffeine, quinine, and propylthiouracil (PROP ) – to understand their impact on people's preference for tea, coffee and alcohol.

The results showed that people who are more sensitive to caffeine and drink a lot of coffee consume low amounts of tea. In other words, people who have an increased ability to experience the bitterness of coffee – and in particular the distinctly bitter taste of caffeine – learn to associate "good things with it".

"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 Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. "The opposite results of our study suggest that coffee consumers acquire a taste or ability to detect caffeine because of the learned positive reinforcement (stimulation) elicited by caffeine."

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, also revealed that people sensitive to the bitter flavors of quinine and PROP, a synthetic taste related to the cruciferous vegetable compounds, avoid coffee. For alcohol, a greater susceptibility to PROP bitterness resulted in reduced alcohol consumption, especially of red wine.

"The findings suggest that our perception of bitter tastes, influenced by our genetics, contributes to the preference for coffee, tea and alcohol," Cornelis said. Scientists have applied Mendelian randomization, a technique commonly used in disease epidemiology, to test the causal link between bitter taste and beverage consumption in more than 4,000,000 men and women in the UK .

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