Can we train our taste buds for health?

Our ability to sense sweetness, as well as other tastes, involves a delicate dance between our genetic makeup and the foods we encounter from the womb to the dinner table.

Have you ever wondered why only hummingbirds sip nectar from feeders?
Unlike sparrows, finches and most other birds, hummingbirds can taste sweetness because they carry the genetic instructions necessary to detect sugar molecules.

Like hummingbirds, we humans can sense sugar because our DNA contains gene sequences coding for the molecular detectors that allow us to detect sweetness.
But it is more complex than that. Our ability to sense sweetness, as well as other tastes, involves a delicate dance between our genetic makeup and the foods we encounter from the womb to the dinner table.

Monica Dus explains on this article on The Conversation how her laboratory at the University of Michigan is diving deeply into one specific aspect, which is how consuming too much sugar dulls the sense of sweetness. science and disease prevention.

Monica Dus is a molecular biologist and neuroscientist who studies the connection between food, genes, and brains.

Monica Dus is a molecular biologist and neuroscientist who studies the connection between food, genes, and brains. In her lab, the research focus is on nutrigenomics, or how nutrients can tinker with genetic switches in the DNA to change cell physiology. Monica Dus is also a college professor and teaches Genetics and Epigenetics to hundreds of University of Michigan students every year. She is actively involved in science writing and podcasting, most recently as a Guggenheim Fellow.