It turns out that those pasta and garlic bread binges might not be your fault.
Yep. Not that it helps your waistline, but you might feel a tiny bit relieved. In a recent study, scientists discovered that some of us have a genuine weakness for carbohydrates, which makes us crave them even more.
Our tastebuds are to blame. Some folks are more sensitive to the taste of starchy carbs, causing them to eat more of them — and likely gain weight as a result of this sensitivity, reported Newsweek. Scientists were surprised by these findings, since carbohydrates weren’t previously thought to have a taste.
“It’s typically sugar, with its hedrnically pleasing sweet taste, that is the most sought after carbohydrate,” professor and lead researcher Russell Keast said in a statement. However, this new research shows that non-sweet carbs might actually have a detectable taste to some, Keast says. In fact, the research team from Deakin University in Australia believe that non-sweet carbohydrates could be considered the ‘7th taste’. The currently known six other tastes include sweet, sour, bitter, salty, savory and umami.
The small study published in the Journal of Nutrition asked 34 participants to keep dietary journals. The participants who picked up on the taste of carbs were found to have consumed more carbs overall and also had larger waistlines than those who didn’t.
“What that could mean is that individuals who are more sensitive to the ‘taste’ of carbohydrates also have some form of subconscious accelerator that increases carbohydrate or starchy for consumption. But we need to do much more research to identify the reason why,” the researchers concluded.
So, there you have it. You might be able to blame your love affair with all things starch on your hyper-sensitive taste buds.
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