WHAT is a salad without dressing, or boiled potatoes without a knob of butter? Now French researchers may have discovered why we find fatty foods so irresistible 鈥� because we may have a 鈥渢aste bud鈥� for fats.
When Phillippe Besnard and his colleagues at the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, France, examined mouse tongues they found a receptor protein called CD36 that appears to make lipids tasty to the animals. They believe humans may also have CD36 taste receptors and speculate that variations in their sensitivity may be linked to eating disorders and conditions such as obesity.
When mice engineered to lack CD36 were given a choice of two feed bottles containing fatty or fat-free feed they showed no preference for the fatty liquid, even after a period of starvation. Normal mice consistently chose the lipid-laced drink and consumed far more of it.
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The taste bud also appears to prepare the digestive tract to receive fats. When Besnard and colleagues stimulated CD36 with lipids, the mice began releasing bile into their guts even though they hadn鈥檛 swallowed any fat (Journal of Clinical Investigation, vol 115, p 3177).
鈥淭here is a clear evolutionary advantage to having a taste bud for lipids,鈥� says Nada Abumrad, a nutritional researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, who wrote a commentary accompanying the article. 鈥淚t showed our ancestors that fatty foods are good for us because they allow us to store energy.鈥�
