Carb lovers, rejoice: The next official taste may well be “starchy.”
Although we’ve long known that we taste bitter, salty, sour, sweet and, more recently, umami (savory) dishes, a study published in August in the Oxford journal Chemical Senses found that our taste buds can also detect complex carbohydrates.
“Most cultures have a diet that comes from at least 60 percent carbohydrates,” Juyun Lim, an associate professor of sensory science at Oregon State University and co-author of the study, tells The Post. “It’s kind of amazing to think that we wouldn’t be able to taste complex carbohydrates.”
Lim had subjects try water and carb solutions and found that their taste buds picked up the complex carbohydrates.
“Subjects would describe it as a starchy, rice-like or pasta-like taste,” says Lim, who’s 41 and based in Corvallis, Ore.
Nevertheless, she says more research needs to be done before “starchy” officially becomes the sixth taste.
“While we may be able to taste the samples, we do not know the exact mechanisms or know which specialized receptors pick up on these carbohydrates,” Lim says. “But we now know that our taste buds are more complex than we think.”