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Health News Feature
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Some hot and spicy foods can actually deaden your sense of taste (HealthDay News) – Here's an oxymoron -- a contradiction in terms -- for you: The spiciest of foods may dull your taste buds, making it more difficult for you to discern subtle flavor differences. Fortunately, the condition is temporary, researchers say, but the aftertaste -- pardon the pun -- can linger for a while. The villains are those chili peppers used in that popular chip dip, salsa, according research published in the journal Chemical Senses. "When a person tells you they like spicy food because it enhances flavor, what they mean is they like the extra impact that spiciness has. The real taste of the food is actually reduced," says Earl Carstens, professor of neuroscience at the University of California at Davis . Carstens worked with Christopher Simons -- now a research scientist for a major producer of flavors and fragrances -- who, while a graduate student, wanted to study the connections between spicy food and taste. Simons decided to examine the effects of capacin, a chemical found in red chili peppers that makes them hot and spicy. Chili peppers are used in a wide variety of foods, including salsa, chili and curry. It's not clear why the pepper plants produce capacin in the first place, but Carstens speculates it may be a way to avoid being eaten by birds and insects. In an experiment, Simons randomly placed capacin on the right or left side of the tongues of about 40 volunteers. He put a tasteless solution of potassium chloride, similar to salt, on the other sides. The volunteers rinsed their mouths with solutions that represented the five main flavors that humans can sense -- salty, sweet, sour, bitter and "umami," the flavor linked to monosodium glutamate (MSG), often found in Asian food. Researchers then asked them to describe the strength of the taste sensation on both sides of their tongues. The capacin diminished the ability of the volunteers to sense sweetness by about 30 percent. It also dulled their sense of bitterness and umami. The other taste senses, however, were not affected. Capacin sets off a kind of "false alarm," Carstens says, tricking the tongue's pain sensors "into thinking something hot is there." It's possible the pain signals sent to the brain interfere with taste signals, he says. The taste research could provide useful knowledge about how the pain of mouth sores or toothaches might affect taste, Simons says, and whether those problems affect people's desire to eat properly. So, is there any harm in eating spicy food? Carstens says no, even if it makes you want to drink a bucket of ice water. Capacin is "an inert chemical," he says. "You think you're experiencing a burning sensation, but it's not doing any damage at all." On the Web The U.S. government's National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders has a good explanation on how the sense of taste works. SOURCES:
Earl Carstens, professor, neuroscience, University of California at Davis ; Christopher Simons, Ph.D., sensory research scientist, Givaudan, SA, Paris
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