Discovered: taste for coffee and alcohol is based on emotions

Preference for bitter or sweet drinks is based on feelings and not on taste

If you should be convinced that you drink coffee or alcohol because they like the bitter taste of the drinks, this might not correspond according to the results of a new study of reality. Preferences for bitter or sweet drinks are not based on our sense of taste, but on how we feel by the consumption of the drinks.

The results of a recent study by the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University in Chicago shows that our preference for bitter or sweet drinks based on taste but rather on our feelings. The study was published in the English journal “Human Molecular Genetics”.

Some drinks can lead to disease

The researchers were looking at your study, for genetic reasons, for the taste of the drinks, since such an understanding could help to improve the diet of the people. Drinks are an important Element of our daily intake of calories. Sugary drinks can contribute to obesity and poor oral health, while alcohol, with more than 200 diseases and six percent of deaths worldwide.

Psychoactive components in beverages affect preferences

The genetics underlying our preferences, depends on the psycho-active components of these beverages, explain the authors of the study. People like the atmosphere, in which you offset the consumption of coffee or alcohol. That is why you take such drinks, not because of the taste. The research found a genetic Marker that confirms these claims: people who carried a variant of the so-called FTO gene (the same variant has previously been associated with a lower risk of obesity), preferred in fact, sugary drinks.

Beverage consumption of about 330,000 people, it was examined

It is not known exactly how the FTO with obesity. The FTO Gene probably plays a role in the behavior and the own weight management. In the current investigation, it is the most comprehensive genome-wide Association study on the beverage consumption. The researchers collected for their study, approximately 336.000 persons the consumption of sweet and bitter drinks. Drinks, which are classified as a bitter, comprised coffee, tea, grapefruit juice, beer, red wine and other alcoholic beverages. Sweet drinks included non-alcoholic drinks and juices (except grapefruit juice). (as)