Fat sensitivity in humans: oleic acid detection threshold is linked to saliva composition and oral volume

Fat perception is assumed to result, at least in part, from in-mouth non-esterified fatty acids (NEFAs) detection. The aim of this study was to better understand how human oral physiology may govern the sensory sensitivity to NEFAs. For this purpose, the detection thresholds for oleic acid were determined for 17 human subjects with highly varying salivary and oral characteristics, and the thresholds were related to their oral and salivary characteristics with conventional and multidimensional data analysis. These thresholds were tested on a dairy oil-in-water emulsion that was specifically designed to avoid biases caused by differences in the initial structure of the emulsion as a function …