Bitter foods SHOULD taste terrible...here's why they don't

this started nagging at me years ago when ipas got popular those super bitter beers weren't my thing but I couldn't figure out why they were anybody's thing as a biology nerd I was pretty sure that humans taste or distaste really for bitterness evolved to keep us safe like that our very existence depends on us hating bitter stuff so why were people going crazy for these bitter beers and the more I Ponder this the more bitter Foods I realized I go crazy for from coffee to Chocolate to olives to all sorts of greens so I dove into a deep rabbit hole all the way to The Bitter End of bitterness this is minute food bitterness you know the feeling you know the face even fetuses still in the womb make that face when they taste bitter stuff it's innate and the bitter taste complex driving that response is remarkably well complex we have way more genes that control our ability to taste bitterness than any other taste and the Threshold at which we notice bitterness is way lower than any other taste scientists love to fight about stuff but here they basically agree we humans possess this deeply innate complex finely tuned ability to sense bitterness because having a warning system for certain toxic compounds those produced by plants as a defense against hungry herbivores was a big Advantage for our ancestors we're not talking like recent ancestors though researchers best guess is that bitter taste receptors first popped up in aquatic Critters more than 400 million years ago so hating bitter stuff goes way back but here we are crazy giving hoppy ipas queuing up for coffee and tea chomping on chocolate and cranberries and kale and all sorts of other Foods packed with bitter compounds produced by plants how did we get here from there well first we live a rather different life than our ancient Aquatic ancestors instead of individuals relying on trial and error to figure out what's safe humans are a smart social species that shares information about what to eat and what not to plus these days we're not browsing from thousands of unfamiliar plant species we're generally choosing from a much smaller number of much more familiar Foods today for most humans avoiding plant produced toxins in our food isn't critical to our survival and as a result we've actually lost genes that once helped us taste better compounds and the bitter tasting genes we still have are less functional than they were even a million years ago our aversion hasn't disappeared completely and it now protects Us in some weirdly modern ways if you have a Nintendo switch touch the cartridge then lick your finger that horrible taste is denatonium benzoate one of the bitterest known chemicals and it makes curious kids that put the cartridge in their mouth very unlikely to actually swallow the thing not every human is equally sensitive to bitter though variations in many of those two dozen or so genes that regulate our bitter taste complex can make people more or less sensitive to certain bitter compounds you can buy cheap test strips online so in the name of science I tested my whole family's response to a compound called PTC kid one went full on bitter face and my husband tasted some bitterness but kid too and I nothing we are totally unable to taste this particular compound People Like Us may have no problem eating foods that some other people maybe kid one might find way too bitter and age matters too our taste receptors lose power as we get older so something you find super bitter as a kid might taste perfectly fine later in life but this all only explains why we don't necessarily hate bitter stuff not why we actively seek it out and the thing about bitter compounds is that they tend to be biologically active they affect our bodies in some way sometimes in harmful ones but sometimes in healthy ones grapefruits try terpenes boost our immune response the phenols in tea can improve heart health and organosulfides in the Brassica gang do well all sorts of stuff tons of different animals from caterpillars to chimpanzees are known to self-medicate with bitter medicinal plants and it's likely that we humans too seek out certain good for us bitter compounds and actually we seek out the not good for us ones too because even if they're toxic in large doses small amounts of certain bitter compounds interact with our bodies in ways that feel good the caffeine and coffee and tea the nicotine and tobacco the alcohols in boozy drinks we seek them out because we like how they make us feel and we get used to their bitterness and with enough exposure we might begin to appreciate that bitterness which might turn us on to other bitter flavors and voila a love for bitter stuff is born finally there's the fact that when we're eating most Foods today we are rarely just tasting bitterness like our plant nibbling ancestors might have been whether we're having a Radicchio salad or a dark chocolate truffle or a hoppy IPA the bitterness is balanced by sweetness saltiness sourness Umami spice fat volatile aromatics bitterness is just one piece of our food's delicious complexity I will admit that in the years since I started to wonder about this I've become ever so slightly fonder of ipas they still aren't my go-to drink but they no longer trigger my bitter face and I enjoy one every now and then alongside a nice salad of bitter greens [Music] thank you

Channel: MinuteFood

Views: 156,696

Keywords: bitter, evolution, taste, bitterness, IPA, brussels sprouts, chocolate, flavor, coffee, tea, nintendo, DNA, science, biology, cooking, chemistry, ragusea, recipe, beer

Id: 3eKpso-UycU

Length: 5min 49sec (349 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 16 2023