Do we taste fat?

Fabienne Laugerette (1, 1) , Dany Gaillard (1, 1) , Patricia Degrace-Passilly (1, 1) , Isabelle Niot (1, 1) , Philippe Besnard (1, 1)

1 CSG - Centre des Sciences du Goût

Sense of taste informs the body about the quality of ingested foods. Five sub-modalities allowing the perception of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami stimuli are classically depicted. However, the inborn attraction of mammals for fatty foods raises the possibility of an additional oro-sensory modality devoted to fat perception. During a long time, dietary lipids were thought to be detected only by trigeminal (texture perception), retronasal olfactory, and post-ingestive cues. This minireview analyses recent findings showing that the gustation also plays a significant role in dietary lipid perception.

Keywords: CD36; Lipids; gustation; CD36.

Domains: Neuroscience

Fabienne Laugerette, Dany Gaillard, Patricia Degrace-Passilly, Isabelle Niot, Philippe Besnard. Do we taste fat?. 2006. ⟨hal-00090385⟩