2024 7+8

The human body's inability to break down sucralose, an artificial sweetener found in many zero-calorie food and drink products, is well established by scientific research. The compound is so stable that ...

Ever noticed that a polyester T-shirt is smellier than a cotton one after you work out? New University of Alberta research now shows why.

While ultra-processed food is the latest buzzword in nutrition, the scientific evidence for how it affects our health continues to point in different directions. Why can't researchers just tell us the perfect diet?

Neural networks and other forms of machine learning ultimately learn by trial and error, one improvement at a time.

Your own thoughts are just part of the picture – relationships are vital to the way you think

Some things are untrainable.

Kit Chapman takes a closer look at the chemistry of the water of life, from the slow reactions of its ageing to testing for fakes

The new poll also finds women may be the “unsung heroes” of the grill.

The National Smell and Taste Center provides clinical training, clinical care, and research on normal and disordered smell and taste.

Of the infinite varieties of flavors, textures and colors Brazil has to offer, let's talk a little more about cashews and cajuí.   Brazil is a country that is really rich in everything. This land has so much in abundance, and when abundance isn't enough we still have variety. Let's take cashews and cajuí, for example.     Green cashew   Both pseudo-fruits that a

How was popcorn discovered? An archaeologist on its likely appeal for people in the Americas millennia ago.

04 Jul 2024 --- The US FDA has revoked authorization for using brominated vegetable oil in beverages after an updated assessment finds the chemical has the “potential for adverse health effects in humans.” The new ruling will come into force on August 2, 2024, after decades of what some believe has been “inaction” on BVO.BVO — a vegetable oil that is modified with bromine and has been used as a food ingredient since the 1920s — can be used as a stabilizer in citrus-flavored beverages, particularly to keep the citrus flavoring from floating to the top. It is also found in some sodas.

This isn't good.

As the field floods with new options for endurance athletes, preference still drives their choices for race day

Sweet flavors and healthy ingredients make strawberries one of the world's most popular berries. The complex biochemical compounds that determine the flavor and nutritional value of a strawberry—known ...

Single malt whiskies are popular around the world. The 37 esters, 10 alcohols, 10 phenols, 8 aldehydes, 8 acids, 6 alkanes, 4 ketones and 3 heterocycl…

Cheap beer's greatest attribute isn't its flavor, but its price. We've come up with six different ways you can enhance the flavor of that cheap lager.

Is it a vegetable or a fruit? This is a question we sometimes find ourselves asking with avocados and tomatoes, and the same can be said for peppers.

"Our common goal is to develop artificial chloroplasts and use them to perform photosynthesis in order to produce hydrogen," says Dr Jacob Schneidewind from Friedrich Schiller University Jena. The ...

Dr Manoj Mishra, senior consultant ENT at Max Super Speciality Hospital, Lucknow, says, “Humans and dogs have significantly different olfactory capabilities due to anatomical and functional differences.”

While navigating the marketplace, customers need to arm themselves with knowledge of aromatic tactics

At the National Museum in Kraków, Leonardo da Vinci can now put a smell on you.

Fruit may be a staple. It can also be a status symbol prized for flavor, rarity and appearance.

Scientists from the University of Turin, Italy have learned how to combine their complementary competencies in analytical chemistry and big data analytics to achieve significant advances in food science and health.

Six Spanish wines with different wine-making styles were completely dearomatised and later reconstituted to their original volume with a standard volatile solution containing 15 wine aroma compounds with broad differences in physicochemical characteristics. The headspace composition of the reconstituted wines was evaluated using an automated dynamic headspace (DHS) method combined with thermal desorption (TD) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). This method provides a snapshot of the volatile profiles transferred to the headspace in non-equilibrium conditions. The results showed that the non-volatile matrix of the wine significantly affected the transference to the headspace of the 15 aroma compounds. Differences between wines for butanoic and hexanoic acids, DMS and vanillin are above factors 5, 4 or 3, respectively, while for ethyl acetate, ethyl decanoate, 3-methylbutan-1-ol, 2-phenylethan-1-ol or 4-ethylphenol are close to a factor 2. Only ethyl butanoate was uniformly transferred. The release of DMS was related to copper levels, while pH explained part of the release of fatty acids. However, most effects of volatility are difficult to explain. Results strongly indicate that a sample-specific correction for volatility is required to interpret the sensory effects of aroma volatiles.

Coriander went from ancient staple to persona non grata.

Geosmin, a ubiquitous volatile sesquiterpenoid of microbiological origin, is causative for deteriorating the quality of many foods, beverages, and drinking water, by eliciting an undesirable “earthy/musty” off-flavor. Moreover, and across species from worm to human, geosmin is a volatile, chemosensory trigger of both avoidance and attraction behaviors, suggesting its role as semiochemical. Volatiles typically are detected by chemosensory receptors of the nose, which have evolved to best detect ecologically relevant food-related odorants and semiochemicals. An insect receptor for geosmin was recently identified in flies. A human geosmin-selective receptor, however, has been elusive. Here, we report on the identification and characterization of a human odorant receptor for geosmin, with its function being conserved in orthologs across six mammalian species. Notably, the receptor from the desert-dwelling kangaroo rat showed a more than 100-fold higher sensitivity compared to its human ortholog and detected geosmin at low nmol/L concentrations in extracts from geosmin-producing actinomycetes.

A microfluidic tongue-on-a-chip platform has been evaluated relative to the known sensory properties of various sweeteners. Analogous metrics of typical sensory features reported by human panels such as sweet taste thresholds, onset, and lingering, as well as bitter off-flavor and blocking interactions were deduced from the taste receptor activation curves and then compared. To this end, a flow cell containing a receptor cell array bearing the sweet and six bitter taste receptors was transiently exposed to pure and mixed sweetener samples. The sample concentration gradient across time was separately characterized by the injection of fluorescein dye. Subsequently, cellular calcium responses to different doses of advantame, aspartame, saccharine, and sucrose were overlaid with the concentration gradient. Parameters describing the response kinetics compared to the gradient were quantified. Advantame at 15 μM recorded a significantly faster sweetness onset of 5 ± 2 s and a longer lingering time of 39 s relative to sucrose at 100 mM with an onset of 13 ± 2 s and a lingering time of 6 s. Saccharine was shown to activate the bitter receptors TAS2R8, TAS2R31, and TAS2R43, confirming its known off-flavor, whereas addition of cyclamate reduced or blocked this saccharine bitter response. The potential of using this tongue-on-a-chip to bridge the gap with in vitro assays and taste panels is discussed.

If you’ve ever snacked on raisins or enjoyed a glass of wine, you may, in part, have the extinction of the dinosaurs to thank for it.

Researchers have programmed a close relative of tobacco plants to produce prebiotic sugars found in human breast milk.