A compound that occurs naturally in breast-milk fools the tongue into ignoring bitter flavors. Naysayers warn that it will allow food manufacturers to use cheap, crappy ingredients and still turn out yummy chow. To me, it sounds like "Atkins-MSG."
Imagine a compound that could dupe your tongue into thinking bland oatmeal was hot-fudge-sundae sweet? Or another that could make kids hoover spinach like Popeye?
"You could make healthy foods taste better," Alejandro Marangoni, a food scientist at the University of Guelph, said of the new field. "Just blocking bitterness has huge potential. Somebody's going to make a lot of money."
Linguagen's "bitter blocker" compound, which received a U.S. patent this month, is the first chemical known to inhibit the taste of bitterness by altering human perception instead of flavour. But it's unlikely to be the last.
(via /.)
