A food additive that blocks our bitter taste receptors could make foods like broccoli more palatable. Karen Hopkin reports
They say you should take the bitter with the sweet. But if you’re not a big fan of bitter, chemists have just the [---1---] for you. Oh, you’ll still have to take the bitter. But you won’t have to taste it. Because scientists have [---2---] a new and improved “bitter blocker.” They [---3---] at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Our taste buds allow us to detect sweet and sour, salty and savory, and, of course, bitter. Of that set of taste sensations, bitterness, most agree, is the most disagreeable. And we can thank (or blame) evolution. We likely find bitter bad because many toxic substances are bitter. So an [---4---] to bitter may have helped our ancestors survive.
Problem is, plenty of healthful foods are bitter, too. Take broccoli and kale. (Please.) The standard solution, drowning out the bitter with butter, sort of [---5---] the veggies’ health food status.
Rather than getting rid of the bitter, chemists came up with a compound that simply blocks our receptors for the bitter molecules, and our ability to taste them. So you may not need that spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Or the broccoli.
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