No Kidding

There is now a sixth taste – and it explains why we love carbs

Her team tested this by giving a range of different carbohydrate solutions to volunteers – who it turned out were able to detect a starch-like taste in solutions that contained long or shorter carbohydrate chains. “They called the taste ‘starchy’,” says Lim. “Asians would say it was rice-like, while Caucasians described it as bread-like or pasta-like. It’s like eating flour.”

The volunteers could still make out this floury flavor when they were given a compound that blocks the receptors on the tongue for detecting sweet tastes. This suggests we can sense carbohydrates before they have been completely broken down into sugar molecules.

When the volunteers were given a compound to block the salivary enzyme that breaks long chains of carbohydrate into shorter ones, they stopped sensing the taste of starch when given solutions containing only long-chain carbohydrates. This suggests that the floury flavor comes from the shorter chains.

This is the first evidence that we can taste starch as a flavor in its own right, says Lim.

 Yeah, low carb dieters already know this.   I can tell right away if something is suspicious.