Your genes make you or a coffee lover: Study

The study showed that people who were more sensitive to caffeine and consumed a lot of coffee consumed a small amount of tea. (Source: Pixabay)

Are you a tea or coffee person? The answer may be your genetic predisposition to a bitter taste, researchers say. This could be because bitterness acts as a natural warning system to protect us from harmful substances. A study led by Northwestern University researchers at the University of Northwestern, and QIMR Berghofer Institute of Medical Research in Australia, investigated the reactions to three bitter substances – caffeine, quinine and propylthioorouracil (PROP) – to understand how they affect people's desire to drink tea, coffee and alcohol.

The findings revealed that people who were more sensitive to caffeine and consumed a lot of coffee consumed a small amount of tea. In other words, people who have an increased ability to taste bitter coffee and especially a pronounced bitter caffeine taste learn to associate "good things with it."

"You expect people who are particularly sensitive to the bitter taste of caffeine to drink less coffee," said Marilyn Cornelis, Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of North Vyr Feynberg School of Medicine. "Contrary to the results of our study, coffee consumers get a taste of caffeine or the ability to detect caffeine due to the positive exacerbation (stimulation) of caffeine."

The study, published in the Scientific Reports, also revealed that people who are sensitive to bitter flavors of quinine and PROP do not allow coffee to mix the synthetic flavor associated with cross-legumes. With regard to alcohol, higher sensitivity to PROP bitterness led to lower alcohol consumption, especially red wine.

"The findings suggest that our perception of the bitter taste reported by our genetics prefers coffee, tea and alcohol," said Cornelis. Scientists have used Mendelian's randomization, which is commonly used in epidemiology of diseases to test the causal relationship between the bitter taste and drink consumption of more than 4,000,000 men and women in the United Kingdom

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