New research reveals how caffeine impacts taste – BeanScene

The next time your almond croissant tastes a little less sweet alongside a long black, there may be more to it than a simple clash of flavours. According to new research, the caffeine in that coffee may be influencing your tastebuds.

A biomedical engineering paper published in BME Frontiers has revealed direct evidence that caffeine can heighten sensitivity to bitter and sour tastes, while having little to no impact on the assessment of sweetness.

A research team from China’s Xi’an Jiaotong University created a biometric taste sensor that could ‘listen’ to taste receptors in real-time.

To do this, they grew tastebud organoids from stem cells to mimic the function of natural tastebuds. They then used 3D electrodes that could fully cover the artificial tastebuds to ensure reliable results.

This experiment found caffeine tripled the baseline activity of the cells, which means the presence of the chemical significantly increases the activity of taste cells.

These results could have implications for coffee cupping and sensory evaluation techniques. If caffeine changes how tastebuds perceive flavour, it could mean a taster’s experience of samples later on in cupping sessions could be less accurate than those experienced earlier in the day.

Corresponding author of the study, Professor Chunsheng Wu, says the method of using 3D electrodes and lab-grown tastebud organoids could have far-reaching applications.

“This integrated organoid-3D MEA system bridges biological gustatory models and microelectronic sensing,” he says

“It delivers repeatable, quantitative taste readouts ideal for food formulation testing, pharmaceutical bitter masking screening, and studying taste dysfunction linked to inflammation or radiotherapy.”