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Life wouldn\u2019t be as sweet without the bitter. It\u2019s an adage for life, one that really seems to have been taken to heart by coffee drinker of the world who are pushing this fanciful turn of phrase to its logical conclusion: life\u2019s potential for sweetness can only be increased by the addition of more bitter. Lots of it. A new study<\/a> shows that those more sensitive to bitter tastes consume more coffee than those who aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n As reported by NPR<\/a>, researchers looked through collected data from the UK Biobank<\/a>, a genetic repository where \u201cmore than 500,000 people have contributed blood, urine and saliva samples\u201d as well as \u201cfilled out questionnaires asking a variety of health-related questions, including how much coffee they drink.\u201d<\/p>\n For their analysis, researchers pored over the half million participants to find those who were more or less sensitive to one or more of three bitter compounds: caffeine, quinine, and propylthiouracil, a substance generally used in \u201cgenetic tests of people’s ability to taste bitter compounds.\u201d When cross-referencing the participants with their self-reported coffee intake, the researchers found that people more sensitive to caffeine\u2014meaning those who are more genetically adept at picking up on its bitter taste\u2014consumed more coffee than those less sensitive to it, by two tablespoons on average. Interestingly enough, those sensitive to quinine or propylthiouracil\u2014neither of which are in coffee\u2014consumed less.<\/p>\n To explain the ostensibly counterintuitive findings, Marilyn Cornelis, an assistant professor of preventative medicine at Northwestern University\u2019s Feinberg School of Medicine and one of the study\u2019s authors, postulates that it isn\u2019t the taste that keeps people coming back but what they associate with it, namely the energy jolt. Folks may \u201clearn to associate that bitter taste with the stimulation that coffee can provide,\u201d as Cornelis states.<\/p>\n It just goes to show the alchemical calculus coffee drinkers perform on a daily, if not multiple times a day, basis: that if you are going to chase the dragon of sweet, sweet liquid mental acuity, you\u2019re going to need equal parts bitter to catch it.<\/p>\n Zac Cadwalader<\/a>\u00a0is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.\u00a0Read more Zac Cadwalader\u00a0on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Top image \u00a9 Vladimir Floyd\/Adobe Stock<\/em><\/p>\n The post Bitter, Sweet Symphony: People Sensitive To Bitterness Drink More Coffee<\/a> appeared first on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Source: Coffee News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Life wouldn\u2019t be as sweet without the bitter. It\u2019s an adage for life, one that really seems to have been taken to heart by coffee drinker of the world who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[63,27,65,33,61,32,59,31,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}