6533b85afe1ef96bd12b9c74

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Do we taste fat?

subject

description

Sense of taste informs the body about the quality of ingested foods. Five sub-modalities allowing the perception of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami stimuli are classically depicted. However, the inborn attraction of mammals for fatty foods raises the possibility of an additional oro-sensory modality devoted to fat perception. During a long time, dietary lipids were thought to be detected only by trigeminal (texture perception), retronasal olfactory, and post-ingestive cues. This minireview analyses recent findings showing that the gustation also plays a significant role in dietary lipid perception.