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Science

Tampering with Taste Buds for Better Coffee? 463

Posted by CmdrTaco from the thats-just-flat-out-strange dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Globe and Mail article states that scientists are busy working on making everything taste great: " In a small office just west of the New Jersey Turnpike, researchers are taking the human taste bud into a brave new world. Here, it is not cream or milk that the employees of Linguagen Corp. add to their morning java, but a dash of a biological compound that fools their brain into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte"
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Tampering with Taste Buds for Better Coffee? More

Tampering with Taste Buds for Better Coffee?

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  • Oh, Shit (Score:4, Funny)

    by adamjaskie ( 310474 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:07PM (#5210207) Homepage
    There goes my experience with making good coffee... Now instead of being careful and buying good coffee, grinding it themselves, brewing it properly, everyone will buy folgers and percolate it and sprinkle some pixie dust stuff into it and it will taste good. Assholes...

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kipper the Llama ( 454021 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:07PM (#5210208)
    Hopefully they'll be able to use these compounds in medicines and other neccesary, but distasteful products...

    Or they'll release it in paste form and it'll become a sex toy. Ah, America!
    • A sex toy that, when overused, tastes like fish... hasn't a more-natural version of this already been discovered?

  • Prediction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:08PM (#5210210) Journal
    Every fast food restuarant ( cough McDonalds) will add this to their coffee and secret sauce to their big macs. God knows whats in their patties.

    Isn't this true they add fat and chemicals to their fries so they taste better ?
    • Yes, and those fatty chemicals they add go by the names of "salt" and the very high tech "sugar".

    • Re:Prediction (Score:5, Informative)

      by jpiterak ( 112951 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:46PM (#5210394)
      Hmmm... I seem to remember an interview with the writer of 'Fast Food Nation' about these guys.

      Turns out that this company already sells to the fast food chains:

      Beef flavor for hamburgers: The beef is so processed by the time that the company is done with it, they need to 'add flavor back in'. Guess how?

      Fries flavor: Yes, you have sale and sugar, but did you know that McD's also adds 'beef flavor' to the fries? There was a lawsuit about this a while back when they were using 'real beaf', unbeknowst to many Hindi customers. Gues what they use now?

      There was a lot more 'stuff' and discussion about how this food is processed before it ends up in your burger bun. Though I haven't bought the book (yet), I haven't been back to a McDonalds since, either...

      • Chicken Fat!
      • McDonalds used to have the best fries around. When my wife decided to learn how to make fries, these fries were the benchmark. When her skill eventually plateaued, our conclusion was -- wow, they are almost like McDonalds fries.

        Now all their stuff is like styrofoam bits cut into food shapes, with textures painted in, then warmed up and dipped into rancid tallow. Don't even let my kids go there any more.

  • Miracle Berry!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:09PM (#5210215)
    We don't need some mad scientist in jersey to cook up funky chemicals that make bitter into sweet, mother nature already did it a long time ago with the miracle berry. [expasy.org]
    • That's pretty cool. I know it says the plant is indigenous to tropical Africa but I wonder if it could be raised under grow-lamps? Do you know whether it can be ordered from a nursery in the U.S.?

  • The dash of biological compound... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hott of the World ( 537284 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:09PM (#5210217) Homepage Journal
    is made from people!
    We'll call it soylet green!

  • Aftertaste? (Score:5, Informative)

    by droid_rage ( 535157 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:11PM (#5210223) Journal
    According to the article, the alterations in perception are very temporary. So while you're drinking that black, bitter coffee it probably tastes great, but in about five minutes you'll get that aftertaste and want to brush your teeth.

  • Imagine if I got some for my girlfriend... (Score:3, Funny)

    by gtaluvit ( 218726 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:12PM (#5210227)
    then I could...

    Sorry, thats just wrong. ;)

  • Warm milky latte? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gwernol ( 167574 )
    ...a biological compound that fools their brain into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte

    Can I really be the only human left on earth who belives coffee should be black and bitter? If you want a drink that tastes like warm milk, I'd suggest a nice cup of warm milk, or perhaps some hot chocolate. Coffee is meant to be alarmingly black and strong.
    • The way I like it depends on the coffee. If it is REALLY good coffee, I can drink it black. Otherwise, I use a small amount of cream and sugar. I don't add anything to espresso though. The thing I really don't understand is: WHAT THE HELL is the POINT of a decaf skim-milk latte? That is like getting a cheeseburger without beef! Its stupid. If you want no caffeine (well, not as much caffeine) don't get coffee. If you don't want fat, drink it black. Skim milk just makes coffee taste watery. If I add something to coffee, it has to have some fat in it, otherwise, it just waters it down. Skim milk doesnt smooth coffee out, it weakens it. In turkey, there is a saying: "Coffee should be as black as hell, as strong as death, and as sweet as love" I don't quite agree with that. I don't like sweet coffee.
      • That's black as death, hot as hell and strong as love, asshole, don't put sugar into coffee if you like coffee, it'll taste like sugar like the rest of american food. BTW I wonder if the space shuttle had an expresso machine, or if all they have was instant, for fuck's sake, the name was "Columbia", it's just not right not to have good coffee onboard.

      • Re:Warm milky latte? (Score:5, Funny)

        by qengho ( 54305 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @01:03PM (#5210458)

        WHAT THE HELL is the POINT of a decaf skim-milk latte?

        Some comic said he went to Baskin-Robbins and had a non-fat, sugar-free frozen yogurt and thought, "I just bought a bowl of Cold."

        • One of the devs in our division drinks double-shot decaf lattes with skim milk and without foam. When he walks up to the espresso bar with his coffee cup, the barista asks him "A double tall why bother, right?"
    • I've been drinking black coffee since I was in grade school. Now I am making pretty good money doing what I like. I'm in Mensa. I'm charming. Kids today sit around on their fat asses, chugging carbonated sugar water. They're fat, lazy, and dumb. We need a movement to get more of today's children drinking coffee. Black coffee.

      Really, how can you truly enjoy coffee with all that crap in it? I agree, it's heresy. It's like someone who loves wine coolers bitching about how real wine doesn't taste good. Bastards.

      What's worse are those god-aweful flavored coffees! The ones where they actually flavor the beans with some aweful chemicals. One time, this stupid house-keeper where I work thought she was being nice, so she cooked up a batch of this insane blueberry flavored coffee! The whole place reeked of that crap. The flavor agent bonded into the coffee basket, so the coffee tasted of blueberry for about a week. It was a dark time.

      I came up with a catchy phrase, suitable for bumper-stickers, sigs, whatever:

      Decaf is for the lazy and the damned.


      No, sir, you are not alone.

  • Black Coffee (Score:5, Funny)

    by AltImage ( 626465 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:12PM (#5210230) Homepage
    Some of us already LIKE black coffee...don't go messing it up for us you insensitive clod! I like my coffee like I like my women...bitter.
    • I thought it was "I like my coffee like I like my women....hot!"
    • I like my coffee like I like my women...
      first thing in the morning.
      (Recent SNL joke)

    • Re:Black Coffee (Score:3, Insightful)

      by blkros ( 304521 )
      The sun ate away the night, soaking the sky red. I looked out the pinked window of my kitchen, through a veil of coffee vapor. It was my first cup of the day. I wasn't drinking it, yet. I was holding it, feeling the warmth, cuddling it, like a lover.
      Caffeine is my addiction, my one true love, but she is a mean, rotten bitch. You love her, but she doesn't love you back. If you try to leave her she makes your head pound. If you indulge, too much, in her warm, black bitterness, she will tear your stomach and nerves apart. Once you've had her, though, you just can't imagine life without her. You may live for coffee, but remember-- Coffee. Doesn't. Care. ...

  • Wonka (Score:2, Funny)

    by swordboy ( 472941 )
    Violet! You're turning violet, violet!

  • News? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:20PM (#5210265) Homepage
    fool brains into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte

    How is this different from Starbucks?

  • Isn't it called "monosodium glutasmate"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MsWillow ( 17812 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:20PM (#5210267) Homepage Journal
    Often listed on labels as "natural flavors", MSG is found in seaweeds, and it makes things taste much better. Unfortunately, too much MSG can backfire - it makes things taste great, but for many hours afterward, I get extreme heartburn :(

    As many prepared foods use "natural flavors", it makes shopping more than a bit of a chore, in that I need to read *all* that tiny print of "ingredients", on everything I buy. Grrrr. And all this stems from a childhood spent eating cheap food flavored with Accent, which is mostly MSG.
    • I had a girlfriend who was acutely sensitive to MSG; she got an instant headache over her left eye after just one or two bites of something. (My grandomother is the same way, and they both suffer from the thyroid condition known as Graves Disease. Coincidence?)

      It made me very aware of what did and didn't contain MSG. Over the years we watched various products stop using it, much to her delight. In recent years however (we broke up in '99), it seems to be making a comeback. Anybody know why this is, other than the obvious?

      I can't detect it in foods myself, but since it's classified as an excitatory neurotoxin I try to avoid it anyway.
      • I had a girlfriend who was acutely sensitive to MSG; she got an instant headache over her left eye after just one or two bites of something. (My grandomother is the same way, and they both suffer from the thyroid condition known as Graves Disease. Coincidence?)

        It's no coincidence! Your girlfriend is your sister!
      • Actually, if you do a little research on MSG on the net, you'll find a fairly hot debate going on as to the side-effects/dangers of MSG.

        The official FDA stance on it is pretty well summed up here:

        http://chinesefood.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite. ht m?site=http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/2455/ba k%2Dmsg.html

        Basically, they seem to say it's safe for the general public, but do acknowledge that there seem to be some individuals who are sensitive to it, and get such side-effects as headaches from it.

        Personally, it doesn't really concern me. If you discover you're senstive to MSG and it upsets your stomach, gives you a headache, or whatnot - then obviously avoid it. I've never had any problem eating foods that contained it though - and to me, it's no worse than the hundreds of other modifications made to commercial foods. (Coloring and dyes to enhance the look of a food, for example.)
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • So how can we tell when something has gone bad? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:21PM (#5210270)
    Taste is very important in determining what is safe to consume. When milk turns sour, it has gone bad and generally is no longer safe to drink. The first bad-tasting drop results in the milk being spit out, and disaster prevented.

    Imagine if that milk has been redesigned to taste fresh long after it has already gone bad...

  • How about the smell (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RPoet ( 20693 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:22PM (#5210273) Journal
    A large part of the experience of having a cup of really good coffee, is the smell, the deducing aroma that fills you with an eager anticipation of the magnificent black gold that is about to wash down your throat (oh my god, someone gimme a coffee right NOW! :). Even coffee haters like the smell of good coffee. Serving icky bitter coffee that fools the brain into thinking it tastes good, won't change the sentiment of "something's wrong here".

    • you bastard (Score:2, Funny)

      by zrodney ( 253699 )
      the smell, the deducing aroma that fills you with an eager anticipation of the magnificent black gold that is about to wash down your throat (oh my god, someone gimme a coffee right NOW! :)


      now I HAVE TO GO MAKE SOME COFFEE

  • Good for business... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joebagodonuts ( 561066 ) <cmkrnl@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:23PM (#5210279) Homepage Journal
    From the article:

    Mr. Jacobson said he recognized the obvious need to alter the flavour of drugs, "particularly life-saving drugs, where taste is an impediment to taking them." But he also raised concerns that these new compounds could allow food manufacturers to use "cheaper, crappy ingredients."

    "I once asked a pasta sauce maker how come you sometimes see corn syrup on the list of ingredients in a tomato sauce and he told me it was to mask the taste of cheaper tomatoes," said Mr. Jacobson. "We could see more things like that."

    I just went for a checkup with my doctor. One of the things we discussed was nutrition. He spoke of the nutritional value of foods being degraded, what with over farming, mass production of food, corporate farming, and the like. I know this is vulgar, but this is another way to make shit taste like ambrosia. Ever think there is a reason why things taste bad?
    I probably sound alarmist or anti-technology. I'm not. At the same time, I'm not one to blindly say technology or so called progress is a good thing. This seems to me to be another way to increase profit and reduce costs. Good for business, not so good for consumers. But we're sheep. What do consumers know?

    I guess I'm bitter. Maybe I can use some.

    • Fast food Nation (Score:5, Informative)

      by Petronius ( 515525 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @01:49PM (#5210654)
      You should read the amazing "Fast Food Nation" [mcspotlight.org] by Eric Schlosser. One of the chapters talks about the "taste" industry ('flavorists') and all these companies setup along the NJ turnpike. They make a liquid chemical agent that smells exactly like a flame-broiled burger. The reason: the food is so shitty that the taste disappears when it is processed. It has to be added 'back'...
      Same idea coming to a Starbucks near you? Great world we live in!
    • On the other hand, this (or similar technologies) could also be used to make foods which are cheaper to make, but actually better for you, and still taste better. For example, you could increase the Soy protein content (hopefully after finding a way to strip out some of the hormones from the soy mass) without losing flavor, while using the soy to decrease both carbohydrates and fat; thus, reducing the calorie count.

      The reason I use this particular example is because since going on the atkins diet I've dramatically increased my soy intake, but most of those soy-based foods (for instance, waffles entirely made of supro(tm) soy flours) taste pretty much like the real thing, though they are bland. Another excellent example is the morningstar (got to love a veggie foods company named after a medieval weapon, though I'm sure that's not where the name is from) corn dogs; they really have the taste and texture of meat-based corn dogs down (when deep fried) but they're too bland.

      To avoid being sold crappy food using this technique, don't buy the cheap-ass prepared foods. To avoid being sold crappy food entirely, don't buy prepared foods at all. For me the happy medium is to buy canned-type foods at the store, as well as peanut butter and so on, and to cook basically everything else myself. On this diet I'm forced to do so anyway, of course; I can't just go get a frozen burrito. If I want a burrito I have to go get low-carb tortillas, and cut the beans down to basically nothing with TVP as filler (Because (pinto) beans are full of carbohydrates. Black beans are better but are still mostly carbs.)

      Anyway, when cheap brands get cheaper, avoid them more strongly, and you will avoid these issues. On the other hand, putting corn syrup and mediocre tomatoes in tomato sauce is not going to dramatically change its flavor unless you are comparing it to sauce made from all the finest ingredients, which almost nothing you can buy pre-prepared in the store will be anyway. When YOU make tomato sauce, you can be pretty sure that it won't contain any worms, for example; They really don't give a shit about a few worms which will be reduced to a slime and homogenized with the tomatoes. While that won't impact your health at all it does illustrate my point.

  • Raw fish, anyone...? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by girl_geek_antinomy ( 626942 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:24PM (#5210283)
    Okay, so we're talking about AMP which although as the article says is a 'natural' chemical, is also one of the very basic molecules used by every cell in our bodies as part of the mechanism for determining their metabolic needs and monitoring what's going on within them. This gives me a case of the screaming heebie jeebies.

    I somehow can't help thinking of Monosodium Glutamate here... Flavour enhancers don't have what you might call a *glowing* record of healthiness...

    What this compound is doing is bitter-blocking, and I don't know about you, but there are bitter flavours I actually find rather enjoyable - strong black coffee being one of these... But an awful lot of foods contain bitterness to a greater or lesser degree, and it makes up one of the five tastes we're actually able to percieve - the effect of using this stuff widely would have to be tantamount to knocking out the blue channel in our eyes! It's going to do all kinds of really bizzare things to how things taste, not all of them good...

    Besides which, the article mentions that the side effect is to induce a flavour of raw fish... I dunno, I'll take my coffee with a kick please, not with a side order of sushi...

  • Think big (Score:4, Funny)

    by archeopterix ( 594938 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:24PM (#5210285) Journal
    Shooting heroin turns any unpleasant experience into a pleasant one not just tasting crappy coffee into tasting smooth coffee.

  • Huge importance for vegetarian food? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jlrowe ( 69115 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:26PM (#5210292)
    While I am certainly no vegetarian, I seen nothing wrong with eating food from the vegetable realm.

    And much of what has been passed off in the past as a substitute for 'meat' has been pretty unpalatable. Even food that was not passed off that way sometimes isn't very great, tofu for instance.

    But one good use for this taste altering method might be to make a veggie burger actually taste decent. Add that to getting the texture right, and some of these products might actually take off.

    Tofu? Well, maybe never...It doesn't even look good!

    • By the way, tofu is not meant to be a food in its own right. Much like eating unflavored gelatin. Tofu is a filler substance and it generally takes up the flavor of the main dish its added to. In the hands of an experienced oriental chef, I think you might find it to be quite palatable.

  • Also in the pipeline... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Moorlock ( 128824 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:26PM (#5210293) Homepage
    • Gasoline that makes your dashboard always report that you have a full tank - even if you're about to run out of gas
    • A helmet that convinces defendants to confess - even if they're innocent
    • A panacea that stops children from ever crying - even if they've just been hit by a car
    • An instrument that tells pilots they're flying at a safe altitude - even if they're about to hit the ground
    Really, what's the point in celebrating creating something whose only purpose is to make our well-evolved biological sensors and filters fail.

    • Re:Also in the pipeline... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:41PM (#5210364)
      The difference is that the examples you listed all have serious drawbacks. This stuff, on the other hand, is supposed to improve whatever it's added to without huge negatives.

      Think of it more along the lines of perfume/cologne used to mask bodily odors, paint applied to things like cars and houses, or simply salt, pepper, and spices added to food. It already happens in a lot in the current world -- cheating our biological sensors and filters -- and there's not always THAT much harm in it.
  • Here, it is not cream or milk that the employees of Linguagen Corp. add to their morning java, but a dash of a biological compound that fools their brain into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte

    Why can't they drink milky double latte instead?
  • It'll be amazing if we can kids to eat green stuff. The long term effects of this may be profound. I would go so far as to say society as a whole would improve.

  • Safety? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by IcEMaN252 ( 579647 )
    Is it just me or has this not been around long enough for there to be any meaningful safety studies? I for one don't want to eat something until its been tested.
  • Which exit?

  • I happen to like black coffee (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fatwreckfan ( 322865 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:46PM (#5210397)
    I personally don't want anyone messing with my coffee's flavour. I like it black.

    If others don't like the taste, why are they drinking it?? It can't be for the caffine content, since then they could drink tea or Coke, or hell, even take caffine pills.

  • Taste isn't enough (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rking ( 32070 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:47PM (#5210400)
    People don't just crave tastes, whether they know it or not they want fats and carbohydrates and the various chemicals in their foods.

    I don't believe that all the artificial sweetners and diet drinks have solved people wanting sugar. They may well help someone who is consciously applying will power, but it isn't just a matter of "I had something sweet so I'm satisfied".

    When someone wants a bacon sandwich they'll doubtless associate that with the taste of the sandwich because that's one of the most obvious conscious effects of eating the sandwich. But if you produce a fat free substitute that taste identical I thikn they'll still feel empty, or missing something, and they'll still remedy that by going and getting some food that IS fatty, whether they rationalise that by taste or anything else.
  • chinese restaurants have been doing this for ages.

  • Kissing (Score:5, Funny)

    by EverStoned ( 620906 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @12:54PM (#5210421) Homepage
    I've always wondered if it would be possible to make some sort of mint or pill, etc, that would highten senses in the taste buds to make kissing better... ...not that I have a girlfreind or anything.
  • That just had to be the topic for this comment ... best line of the day.

    As far as the coffee and women jokes go ... I get my women the same way I get my coffee, bitter and cold, but not by choice have you.

    Anyways it seems that everyone thinks this is a bad idea, and I'm going to go on a little soapbox here on why I think it's a great idea.

    Food that is "good for you" tastes like shit, no one really wants to have a salad with no dressing or a bowl full of water for a meal. We enjoy fatty and sweet foods because they taste good. Now sit back and think, this type of technology being added to a dressing for a salad ... if you can make my sensors think that I'm not eating a bowl full of plant leaves that taste god awful, I'll buy the whole lot of it.

    This has many many applications for dealing with losing weight. I've been throwing the idea around as of late of becoming not-fat, but I really do hate the taste of things that are good for me, if I could get past the taste thing and actually enjoy eating things that are good for me, IE free of sugar, salt, fat, etc, then maybe I wouldn't dred the idea of giving up a 24 oz. steak with a side of french fries and a triple chocolate cake slice for desert, all washed down with a nice guiness. If you want a taste of heaven ... you'll have that for a meal ...

    Obviously this isn't going to be a good thing, but eating right makes what you've already screwed up start to work better, maybe a little indegestion is a small price to pay.

  • (from the article)
    In this emerging field, it's not the food that will be modified, but you -- the eater.
    In Soviet Jersey, FOOD modifies YOU!

    *ducks*

  • Linguagen's "bitter blocker" compound, which received a U.S. patent this month, is the first chemical known to inhibit the taste of bitterness by altering human perception instead of flavour

    I'm rather surprised not to have found any comments yet from people opposed to this on the simple grounds that fucking with peoples' biology, in however minor a way, is wrong. This is a drug, not a "flavouring".

    It's almost cute the way Bartoshuk brings up breast milk in the interview. It's in breastmilk? It must be good for us all then, mustn't it? I suspect he had an earpiece in and was being fed quotes by the marketing department.

  • ...then it's been over-extracted. Learn how to brew coffee.
  • Imagine the boon to dieters if these guys come up with something that could be sprinkled on a slice of low-cal breador a rice cake to make it taste just like a steak or a slice of pizza.

    Hell, breakthroughs could revolutionize the chewing gum industry, too-- imagine flavors like "Filet Mignon" or "Boston Cream Pie" or "Bacon Cheeseburger"

    ~Philly
  • ... the tornado in a can [slashdot.org] and we don't need to think about where to put all that chicken slaughter waste anymore.

  • Why mess with bitterness? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @01:10PM (#5210494) Journal
    The bitterness of coffee is what makes it attractive: many cultures have similarly bitter things to drink and chew, and the pleasure comes from the long-lasting sweet taste you get a few minutes afterwards.
    If you're ever chewed kola nuts, you will know what I mean. Intensely bitter when you bite off a piece, but over minutes, you get a sweet reaction that is much smoother than a "real" sweet substance.
    It seems to be part of the addictive process: think of bitter chocolate and those tiny espressos.

  • The Possibilities. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Harker ( 96598 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @01:10PM (#5210495)
    Imagine a compound that could dupe your tongue into thinking bland oatmeal was hot-fudge-sundae sweet? Or another that could make kids hoover spinach like Popeye?


    "You could make healthy foods taste better," Alejandro Marangoni, a food scientist at the University of Guelph, said of the new field. "Just blocking bitterness has huge potential. Somebody's going to make a lot of money."


    I recall a scene from a (bad) movie called Brazil where diners in a restaraunt were served blocks of blue stuff with a picture of what it was suppose to be.

    If the above could be made a reality, we could eat the exact same thing, day after day, and pick what we wated to taste, while eating foods that were perfectly designed for proper digestion, glucose controll (for diabetics) or any number of things. Imagine no more worry about gaining weight because of what you ate? 3 meals a day of Dutch Cholcolate Cake? No problem!

    The only concern I have about this, is the following:

    In fact, children's cough syrup might well be among the first candidate products for AMP.


    Frankly, I'd prefer to have children's medication NOT taste good enough for them to desire it. It's tempting enough for a child got get into sweets without throwing medications into the mix.

  • Famine (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Azureflare ( 645778 )
    This brings to mind the Terry Pratchett book Good Omens, where Famine, one of the four riders of the Apocalypse (although there used to be five, I thought Kaos was awesome ;) creates fast food that tastes great, but is essentially dust. This could be very dangerous. People could feel they are eating something really good, when in fact, they are starving their bodies. Some people may think this a good thing, but what would happen if people didn't stop? IMO people should learn to just control themselves, and give up those temptations (ice cream, crap food etc.) and just learn. What kind of world will it be, where we don't know how to control our every impulse? I think it would be very sad. We would become like animals. I agree with many other posters. We should be concentrating on things that really matter, like cures for AIDS and ways to curb global pollution.

    • Re:Famine (Score:2, Insightful)

      by spanky555 ( 148893 )
      No, no, no.

      Like all technology discovered or created since fire, this could be used for good or bad.

      But done right, this could do a lot towards ending famine - not that we don't have the technology now, but we'd (the U.S.) have even more food to export as a result: people could/would switch to growing soybeans instead of raising livestock, since something like tofu could meet both the nutritional and taste requirements for many people if this technology takes off.

      People would never eat something that tastes good and doesn't have nutritional value, since at least at first, meals like these would cost more...so they'd want to have something almost perfectly balanced, and yet tasty. Imagine: manufacturers could make MREs that taste GREAT and are perfectly constructed to be a well-balanced meal in proteins, fats, carbs, sugars, etc...
  • This reminds me of the Jetsons, where all their meals were in pill form, and they used chemicals to give the pills food-like taste. I remember one episode in which George humorously chided his robotic maid, "You burned the toast, Rosie."
  • Imagine the other uses for this. They could come up with a similar additive to alcoholic drinks. It would fool your brain into thinking that people of the opposite sex are more attractive than they really are.

    Oh wait...

  • Over-hyped... (Score:5, Informative)

    by xintegerx ( 557455 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @01:30PM (#5210577) Homepage
    The best thing that could happen would be to mask tingling in the tongue. Tongues can tell bitterness, sweetness, etc. apart, and the texture of the food, but that's all.

    (OT, but BTW: I remember reading some time back that those popular "taste" regions on a tongue aren't really accurate since your whole tongue can taste the difference between bitterness, sweetness, etc.)

    SMELL is the key to taste.

    slash. posts suggest that spoiled milk could 'taste' delicious, but your tongue is useless at taste unless it is genetically super-calibrated. The way you can 'TASTE' something is with the SMELL before and while the food is in your mouth. If you close your nose and drink spoiled milk with the texture and flow of normal milk, you won't know you did until you get stomach poisoning.

    Yes, although bitterness is associated with toxicity (stuff-you-shouldn'-put-in-your-mouth) and it does apply to most everything,, smell is what really tells you if something is bad or not. You won't be able to tell the taste mandarine and an orange, and maybe even an apple and orange (except for texture obviously) if your nose and eyes are closed.

    You might have learned this on Bill Nye the Science Guy or by reading a book, or the internet. Or some of us participated in all three.

    Follow this lab:

    Here's a link to a 4th grade lab assignment on this. [k12.mo.us]

  • Dangerous? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by marciot ( 598356 )
    Won't this be a tad bit dangerous? As the article points out, bitterness helps us avoid noxious foods. Once this additive gets put everywhere, won't there be people getting sick because they happily ingested a whole gallon of spoiled milk or gulped down moldy pizza?

  • Spits or Swalllows? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tantech ( 618603 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @01:47PM (#5210647)
    Finally, the excuse of "it tastes weird" will be replaced by "GIVE ME MORE"! The age-old question of "Spits of Swallows" will become extinct!

    I can already see a small bottle of this being sold in a package along with a 12-pack of viagra.

  • After instantaneous adoption from fast-food restaurants and chain coffee shops, the substance will later be found to be allergenic/carcinogenic. Moral corporations will discontinue use, and the rest will face class-action lawsuits to remove the substance from their food.

    You read it here first.

  • messing with taste is dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)

    by buttahead ( 266220 ) <tscanlanNO@SPAMsosaith.org> on Sunday February 02, 2003 @02:36PM (#5210886) Homepage
    Taste buds keep us from eating poison! Why would you want to change your taste so that poison would taste good? Sounds like a bad idea to me. Rancid meat tastes bad to us because it is bad for us, but at least now we can make it taste great!

  • 1984 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheTomcat ( 53158 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @02:51PM (#5210956) Homepage
    Hate to call this Orwellian, but it seems so to me.

    Winston and Julia had a hard time finding genuine food (except from the proles). I remember them drinking "Victory Coffee". The same applied to cigarettes and chocolate.

    This isn't so absurd. While it's not so hard to find a GOOD cup of coffee (yet), most people don't care. They'll drink Tim Hortons (Canadian. Think Dunkin' Donuts) coffee and complain that "Gourmet Coffee" is overpriced. I had the hardest time convincing my mother that bigass cans of Maxwell House don't TASTE the same as fresh-ground Kenya AA (or AAA or Green Mountain blends, etc) -- UNTIL she tried it; now she grinds her own, and doesn't store it in the freezer.

    The same is true of chocolate. Think about GOOD chocolate (high-quality). Now, think about any drug-store Easter chocolate. The latter is more like brown WAX with very little taste (and when it "melts" it turns into some sort of foamy paste).

    And speaking of foam, the same comparison can be made to generic vs. "natural" ice cream. I regularly pay 2-3 times the price of "cheap" ice cream, for the good stuff. You know, the kind actually MADE from cream, and not milk plus a dozen gums to make it gellied enough to hold shape, then whipped full of air.

    GOOD beer (premium, expensive, micro-brewed, FRESH) vs. Budweiser, or Coors, or Molson, or Labatt is another example.

    Sorry, now I'm ranting. My point was: LEAVE MY COFFEE ALONE. I like the stuff the way it is. And if you MUST meddle with my favourite bean beverage, I can only hope that it doesn't further affect the price of high-quality coffee.

    I sound elitist.. and, I guess, in this case, I am.

    S

  • There _ARE_ benefits to something like this.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by otis wildflower ( 4889 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @02:59PM (#5210984) Homepage
    ... particularly for those with problems losing weight. If you haven't noticed, foods with sugars (carbohydrates) and fats taste better than those that don't, pretty much as a result of eons of natural selection*. Tricking the taste buds into thinking that indigestible/low-calorie food is more appetizing than it is would be a good thing for this application imho.

    Imagine if you could trick your tongue/tastebuds into thinking celery tastes like chocolate.. Particularly helpful if you could introduce textured cellulose food products with vitamin enrichment that could be used in snack foods.

    Now if someone can only make treadmill grinding (and repetitive exercise in general) LESS BORING..

    *whenever a political vegetarian bugs me (at a party for example), my reply: "If we weren't supposed to eat animals, they wouldn't be so delicious!".. It works as both a smartass remark and a statement on the evolution of human nutrition biology...

  • Does it make *everything* better? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @03:21PM (#5211060)
    Girl: What are you doing? It feels nice! You've never done that before!

    Guy: Mrmff. Mrffmfsf. (lifts head) I know, but I thought I'd give it a try because I love you and stuff.

    Girl: You're the best, I'm going to treat you to a steak dinner tonight. (moans, titls head back, closes eyes)

    Guy: (Sprinkles more powder).

  • Ummm... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@NOspAm.yahoo.com> on Monday February 03, 2003 @02:31AM (#5213676)
    This article had my rapt attention until I got up to this:

    "So far, the company has found the only drawback of adding too much AMP to their coffees, either in the mug or the grinds, is that it generates the taste of raw fish in your mouth, said scientist Stephen Gravina, Linguagen's associate director."

    Ok, so the coffee's not bitter, but instead it tastes like raw fish. This is an improvement?

    And yes, I realize it says that's only if you don't use the AMP properly. But coffee's only bitter if you don't make it properly too. If I had to choose between the two tastes of a bad brew - bitterness or the taste of raw fish - I don't even need to think about which one is worse.

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