Yet another taste-now "starch" gets its own designation!

[GeoffreyLevens]

There is now a sixth taste – and it explains why we love carbs

...But before any new flavours can be enshrined as primary tastes, they must meet a strict list of criteria. Tastes need to be recognisable, have their own set of tongue receptors, and trigger some kind of useful physiological response.

Starch doesn’t tick all of these boxes yet: Lim and her colleagues are yet to identify specific starch receptors on the tongue. Kokumi has not so far made the list because people who eat it can’t put their finger on a specific taste.

One criterion is that a flavour must be useful to us. There’s a strong case to be made for starch here, which is a valuable slow-release energy source that is worth detecting.

“I believe that’s why people prefer complex carbs,” says Lim. “Sugar tastes great in the short term, but if you’re offered chocolate and bread, you might eat a small amount of the chocolate, but you’d choose the bread in larger amounts, or as a daily staple.”