Previous reports that the sensitivity to the bitter tasting substance 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) is related to the sensitivity to other tastes, to chemical irritants, and to fats and oils have led to adoption of PROP as a measure of general oral sensitivity and as a predictor of dietary habits that could impact health. The results, however, have not been consistent. It was recently discovered ...

Human perception of bitterness displays pronounced interindividual variation. This phenotypic variation is mirrored by equally pronounced genetic variation in the family of bitter taste receptor genes. To better understand the effects of common genetic variations on human bitter taste perception, we conducted a genome-wide association study on a discovery panel of 504 subjects and a validation ...

The sense of taste is a specialized chemosensory system dedicated to the evaluation of food and drink. Despite the fact that vertebrates and insects have independently evolved distinct anatomic and molecular pathways for taste sensation, there are clear parallels in the organization and coding logic between the two systems. There is now persuasive evidence that tastant quality is mediated by la...

Background: To measure sensory taste perception in children with an accurate and reproducible method is challenging and objective measurement methods are scarce. Objective: Aim was to characterize sensory taste perception, by measuring the number of fungiform papillae (FP) and to investigate whether the number of FP is associated with sensitivity for bitter taste and with taste preferences for ...

The authors will deploy the “scientific approach to customers’ tastes” by means of “Customer Science” aiming to achieve “Intelligence Design Concept Method.” This model means implementing Customer Science for turning the design process into an explicit knowledge as more creative activities from the implicit knowledge of designing utilizing statistical science. As an example of the application o...

We report a cross-cultural study designed to investigate crossmodal correspondences between a variety of visual features (11 colors, 15 shapes, and 2 textures) and the five basic taste terms (bitter, salty, sour, sweet, and umami). A total of 452 participants from China, India, Malaysia, and the USA viewed color patches, shapes, and textures online and had to choose the taste term that best mat...

This paper analyses retirement expectations and outcomes using the two waves of the UK Retirement Survey, undertaken in 1988-89 and 1994. We argue that responses to questions on expectations are not straightforward to interpret where individuals are asked to report point expectations. As in the studies for the US by Bernheim, the evidence here suggests that individuals tend to report their most...

Gustation is one of the important chemical senses that guides the organism to identify nutrition while avoiding toxic chemicals. An increasing number of metabolic hormones and/or hormone receptors have been identified in the taste buds of the tongue and are involved in modulating taste perception. The gustatory system constitutes an additional endocrine regulatory locus that affects food intake...

People associate basic tastes (e.g., sweet, sour, bitter, and salty) with specific colors (e.g., pink or red, green or yellow, black or purple, and white or blue). In the present study, we investigated whether a color bordered by another color (either the same or different) would give rise to stronger taste associations relative to a single patch of color. We replicate previous findings, highli...

The authors examined preconceptions of taste based on color with a questionnaire administered to 45 college students. The questionnaire related 8 tastes with 10 colors. The results suggested that only a limited number of colors are positively associated with preconceptions of taste. However, certain colors (e.g., red and green) showed consistent patterns of association with taste. Implications ...