MONDAY, April 29, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- The next time you chow down on salsa or chili, prepare yourself for more than a hot flash.
New research suggests the chemical that makes these foods spicy will also dull your taste buds.
"When a person tells you they like spicy food because it enhances flavor, what they mean is they like the extra impact that spiciness has. The real taste of the food is actually reduced," says Earl Carstens, a professor of neurobiology at the University of California at Davis.
Carstens worked with postdoctoral student Christopher Simons, who wanted to study the connections between spicy food and taste. Simons decided to examine the effects of capacin, a chemical found in red chili peppers that makes them hot and spicy.
Chili peppers are used in a wide variety of foods, including salsa, chili and curry. It's not clear why the pepper plants produce capacin in the first place, but Carstens speculates it may be a way to avoid being eaten by birds and insects.
In an experiment, Simons randomly placed capacin on the right or left side of the tongues of about 40 volunteers. He put a tasteless solution of potassium chloride, similar to salt, on the other sides.
The volunteers rinsed their mouths with solutions that represented the five main flavors that humans can sense -- salty, sweet, sour, bitter and "umami," the flavor linked to monosodium glutamate (MSG), often found in Asian food. Researchers then asked them to describe the strength of the taste sensation on both sides of their tongues.
The findings are to be reported in a future issue of the journal Chemical Senses.
The capacin diminished the ability of the volunteers to sense sweetness by about 30 percent. It also dulled their sense of bitterness and umami. The other taste senses, however, were not affected.
Capacin sets off a kind of "false alarm," Carstens says, tricking the tongue's pain sensors "into thinking something hot is there." It's possible the pain signals sent to the brain interfere with taste signals, he says.
The taste research could provide useful knowledge about how the pain of mouth sores or toothaches might affect taste, Simons says, and whether those problems affect people's desire to eat properly.
Simons is now studying how nicotine affects taste sensation. Some researchers think smokers may be thinner than other people because their taste buds are dulled, and they don't get as much of a thrill out of eating.
Is there any harm in eating spicy food? Carstens says no, even if it makes you want to drink a bucket of ice water.
Capacin is "an inert chemical," he says. "You think you're experiencing a burning sensation, but it's not doing any damage at all."
What To Do
Did you know we have taste buds all over our mouths, not just on our tongues? Learn more by visiting this taste bud fact sheet from the University of Michigan. It's designed for kids, but adults may find it worth a look.
Other facts about taste buds appear in this primer from an online biology textbook.
