High Fat Diets Suppress Ability to Taste Fat - Study

An Australian study conducted by the University of Deakin and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a person’s ability to taste fat was influenced by their diet rather than genetics, according to a Food Navigator report on May 25 .  Lead researcher, Russell Keast, director of Deakin’s Centre for Advanced Sensory Science, said the study failed to prove  the preconception that the genes a person was born with affected their appetite for fat.  

In the eight-week study, 44 pairs of adult twins were fed a low and high fat diet, with one twin receiving less than 20% of their daily energy from fat while the other received more than 35% of daily energy from fat and was encouraged to eat dairy, meat and oils. Despite the different fat intakes, both diets included the same amount of daily kilojoules of energy.  

The participants were tested at the start, middle and end of the study and were asked to taste three different liquids and identify the one than contained a fatty acid, with those unable to do so given a larger concentration of fatty acid until a difference was noted.  The study discovered that by the middle and end tests, the twins eating a low fat diet were able to identify lower concentrations of fatty acids than their siblings.