‘I see fat people’

Australian scientists claim they’ve stumbled upon a sixth sense – but not the kind where you become Haley Joel Osment and end up having a movie career that goes nowhere. No, researchers down under have found a new flavor sense: fat.

It’s more or less a well known fact that fat is an excellent vehicle for food flavors and has a highly appealing mouth-feel. A new study, however, suggests that along with sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami (essentially, the ability to detect protein), we can also actually taste fat itself.

Dr. Russell Keast, an exercise and nutrition sciences professor at Deakin University in Melbourne, conducted a study. In the Deakin study, Dr. Keast and his team gave a group of 33 people fatty acids found in common foods, mixed in with nonfat milk to disguise the telltale fat texture. All 33 could detect the fatty acids to at least a small degree.

Here’s where it gets exciting: While all participants could detect some fat, some were better at it than others. With this in mind, the researchers then explored whether sharper fat-tasting abilities corresponded to fat consumption. They did: The higher a person’s fat-tasting sensitivity, the fewer fatty foods that person ate, and the lower that person’s body mass index was.

”I may be very sensitive to sweet tastes, while somebody else may be insensitive. This is common throughout the tastes, and it’s exactly what we’re finding with fat,” Dr. Keast told the Sydney Morning Herald. “People who are very sensitive to fat can taste very low concentrations of it. It appears [those] people have a mechanism that is telling them to stop eating it.”

Findings could lead to an entirely new approach to obesity. Dr. Keast’s team is on the case. Meanwhile, pass the butter and weapons grade lard.