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Would you rather drink a bitter black coffee or sip a sweet coffee? Researchers studying the differences between our taste buds were surprised to discover that our taste preferences are not related to our taste genes but to our taste buds. genes related to the psychoactive properties of certain drinks.
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The scientist Marilyn Cornelis wanted to better understand how our taste buds work with the idea that she could help intervene in people 's eating. But the results she found were not what she was expecting.
Black coffee because it feels good
"The genetics that underlie our preferences is related to the psychoactive components of these beverages," said Cornelis, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
"People like what coffee and alcohol make them feel, that's why they drink it, it's not their taste." Surprising results have been published in Human Molecular Genetics.
The paper shows how the reward-behavior components are related to the choice of drink. These results will help to understand the links between genetics and the consumption of drinks. High sugar beverages are linked to many diseases and conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Gene variant surprises researchers
Alcohol is also an important contributor to many diseases worldwide and accounts for up to 6% of deaths worldwide. Another surprising discovery was the variant of a gene called FTO. Cornelis discovered that people with a variant of the FTO gene preferred sugar-sweetened beverages, although this variant was linked to a lower risk of obesity.
"It's counterintuitive," Cornelis said. "FTO is a mysterious gene and we do not know exactly how it is related to obesity.It probably plays a role in the behavior, which would be related to weight management."
"To our knowledge, this is the first genome-wide association study of beverage consumption based on the perspective of taste," said Victor Zhong, first author of the study and postdoctoral researcher. in preventive medicine in Northwestern.
"It is also the most comprehensive genome-wide association ever done on the consumption of beverages."
Research thanks to the bio-bank
The study was conducted with the help of the UK Biobank – a cohort study of extensive genetic, physical and health data collected from about 500,000 people across the UK.
Initially, the drinks were classified into two categories: bitter taste or sweet taste: bitter coffee group, tea, grapefruit juice, beer, red wine and alcoholic beverages. Juice.
This taste classification has been validated by previous studies. Drinking over a 24-hour period was collected through food reminders or questionnaires. The number of bitter and sweet drinks consumed by about 336,000 people was collected in the cache of the British Biobank.
The researcher then conducted a genome-wide association study of bitter beverage consumption and sweet beverage consumption. The results were then validated using data from three American cohorts.
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