With bitter foods, what you eat determines what you like to eat

Taste of bitter foods changes as repeated consumption alters the constellation of salivary proteins

Introducing plant-based foods to a diet is a common-sense approach to healthy eating, but many people don't like the taste of vegetables, bitter greens, in particular. But give that broccoli a chance. Doing so won't just change your mind; it will actually change the taste of those foods.

What sounds at first like a culinary parlor trick is actually a scientific matter based on specific proteins found in saliva. These proteins affect the sense of taste, and diet composition, at least in part, determines those proteins.

Saliva is a complex fluid containing around 1,000 specific proteins. Identifying all the players is a work in progress, but everything we eat is dissolved in saliva before it interacts with taste receptor cells and all these proteins are candidates for influencing stimuli before food is tasted.

"What you eat creates the signature in your salivary proteome, and those proteins modulate your sense of taste". Bitterness is also a near-universal characteristic of many pediatric medicines, and getting infants to swallow a bitter liquid -- which by nature they want to reject -- can be a challenge. An additive to that medicine to make it less bitter would increase compliance. It's similar to liquid dietary supplements in the geriatric population, which often contain sugar to tame the bitterness. Achieving the same result without sweeteners has obvious benefits.

"If we can convince people to try broccoli, greens and bitter foods, they should know that with repeated exposure, they'll taste better once they regulate these proteins," 12 servings of broccoli, however, for people who avoid these foods because of their bitterness, but would like to include them in their diet, they should know their taste will eventually change.

Trying to convince someone that a salad tastes great isn't going to work because to that person it doesn't taste great. Understanding with taste that we're dealing with something that's movable is significant.