Bitter coffee, why are so many people

It may sound absurd, but people who are sensitive to the bitter taste of coffee are often the subjects who consume this drink the most.

That's the result of a new study published in Scientific Reports. According to the researchers, this sensitivity is not merely a matter of taste, in fact the cause is influenced by genetic structure.

Many people are able to taste the bitterness of food, especially the bitter taste of caffeine.(Photo: Wikipedia).

Marilyn Cornelis, associate professor at Feinberg University School of Medicine at Northwestern University (Chicago, USA) said: "You can assume that people who are especially sensitive to bitterness will drink less coffee but the results of the We show that many people are able to taste the bitterness of food, especially the bitterness of caffeine, and their bodies seem to have a "mechanism" to become interested in hard-to-swallow flavors.

This finding is thought to be quite surprising, because bitterness is often seen as a signal in the "danger warning mechanism" , requiring people to "spit out" harmful substances.

Lead researcher Jue Sheng Ong, from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute (Brisbane, Australia), says their goal is to find out how genetic factors affect the level of consumption of drinks. Bitter taste like tea, coffee and alcohol.

"The bitterness is the same, but we found that the bitter taste of Brussels sprouts, tonic (containing a bitter compound called quinine ) and caffeine is completely different. This is partly determined by the gene. Our " , Ong said.

To get this finding, researchers looked at the genetic structure and the amount of bitter drinks consumed every day by more than 400,000 people in the UK.

The results showed that those with bitter taste of green vegetables (like Brussels sprouts) are more likely to prefer tea than coffee. They also tend to avoid drinking alcohol, especially red wine, than those without these gene variants.

According to Jue Sheng Ong, this result may help scientists study alcoholism or certain drinks.