14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists finally managed to come up with a scientific explanation as to why certain foods and vines have a particular, "delayed" taste, which can be felt some 20 or 30 seconds after they were ingested. Apparently, bacteria living in the mouth are responsible for the breaking down of certain chemical compounds, which, in turn, give both food and vine a particular taste.
The find, detailed in the November 12th issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, explains how some exquisite vines can have an average taste at first, and then puzzle the taster with new aromas. Cysteine-S-conjugates (CSC) – odorless sulfur compounds – are released from their precursors, thiols, and when this happens, they trigger the "new" taste or smell.
Bacteria are responsible for the time it takes for thiols to break down. Researches in the lab have shown that sterile saliva needs some 4 days to break 15 percent of CSC, whereas regular saliva, containing bacteria normally found in the mouth, take 24 hours to break down more than 80 percent of CSC in food and vine.
When it comes to odors, researchers found that thiols only maintained their smell for a few seconds, after which time their scent faded away. When the CSC kicked in, test subjects reported that the fragrance lasted for a few minutes. And even if the smell was gone, participants to surveys said that they could still feel it. Scientists looking into how smell works say that new, rare and unusual smells can leave their "imprint" on the brain, possibly creating stronger inter-neural connections, associating a particular food or vine to a sensation of pleasure.
The applications for this discovery are very diverse, but the most important one is that the find gives food engineers a new tool in creating even tastier foods, with unusual smell. This could virtually offer people new experiences when it comes to eating, and foods engineered in this fashion could also comprise vitamins and other healthy substances, that normally make some foods unlikable to some people.