Tampering with Taste Buds for Better Coffee?

An anonymous reader writes "A Globe and Mail article states that scientists are busy working on making everything taste great: " In a small office just west of the New Jersey Turnpike, researchers are taking the human taste bud into a brave new world. Here, it is not cream or milk that the employees of Linguagen Corp. add to their morning java, but a dash of a biological compound that fools their brain into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte"

Comments

Re:Prediction

[jpiterak]

Hmmm... I seem to remember an interview with the writer of 'Fast Food Nation' about these guys.

Turns out that this company already sells to the fast food chains:

Beef flavor for hamburgers: The beef is so processed by the time that the company is done with it, they need to 'add flavor back in'. Guess how?

Fries flavor: Yes, you have sale and sugar, but did you know that McD's also adds 'beef flavor' to the fries? There was a lawsuit about this a while back when they were using 'real beaf', unbeknowst to many Hindi customers. Gues what they use now?

There was a lot more 'stuff' and discussion about how this food is processed before it ends up in your burger bun. Though I haven't bought the book (yet), I haven't been back to a McDonalds since, either...

Over-hyped...

[xintegerx]

The best thing that could happen would be to mask tingling in the tongue. Tongues can tell bitterness, sweetness, etc. apart, and the texture of the food, but that's all.

(OT, but BTW: I remember reading some time back that those popular "taste" regions on a tongue aren't really accurate since your whole tongue can taste the difference between bitterness, sweetness, etc.)

SMELL is the key to taste.

slash. posts suggest that spoiled milk could 'taste' delicious, but your tongue is useless at taste unless it is genetically super-calibrated. The way you can 'TASTE' something is with the SMELL before and while the food is in your mouth. If you close your nose and drink spoiled milk with the texture and flow of normal milk, you won't know you did until you get stomach poisoning.

Yes, although bitterness is associated with toxicity (stuff-you-shouldn'-put-in-your-mouth) and it does apply to most everything,, smell is what really tells you if something is bad or not. You won't be able to tell the taste mandarine and an orange, and maybe even an apple and orange (except for texture obviously) if your nose and eyes are closed.

You might have learned this on Bill Nye the Science Guy or by reading a book, or the internet. Or some of us participated in all three.

Follow this lab:

Here's a link to a 4th grade lab assignment on this.