Food Preferences

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  How Your Tongue Affects Your Food Preferences - New Study Finds

  A new study by a trio of researchers in the UK has investigated how our unique "tongue prints" may play a role in determining our liking for certain foods.

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  A Study Reveals How Your Genetics May Affect The Way You Taste Food

  Do you find karela (bitter gourd), amla (Indian gooseberry) and methi (fenugreek leaves) to be exceptionally bitter? If yes, then your genes may be responsible for this. According to a new study, a specific gene makes certain compounds taste bitter.

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  Hunger Can Make Any Food Taste Better. Here’s Why

  as per the recent finding by the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan, food tastes sweeter when we are starving, but bitter food also becomes more tolerable.

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  Gandhi Jayanti Special: Mahatma Gandhi's Experiments with Food

  Did you know - The dietary experiments of Mahatma Gandhi reached a point wherein he stopped eating all spices and only consumed boiled or raw food?

• Fake Flavours: Why Artificial Aromas Can't Compete With Real Food Smells

  The Aromafork is a fun way to experiment with flavours, but its vials of fake strawberry, banana and almond smell disgusting. Would you be happy unwrapping a molecular gastronomy kit on Christmas morning?Who, I wonder, actually uses DIY molecular gastronomy...

• Saddam's Chocolate and Gaddafi's Camel Milk: Tyrants' Meals Revealed

  From Stalin's all-night Georgian banquets to Hitler's obsessive vegetarianism, a new book spills the beans on their dinner tables.As any parent of a young child can tell you, the line between neurotic eating and megalomania is thin. Indeed, by gathering...

• How Flavours Evoke Emotions

  Lisa Hanock-Jasie turns into coffee fiend during the holidays, mainly because she loves the peppermint lattes. "I love the warmth of the cup in my hand, the aroma just makes me feel happy and calm and good," said Hanock-Jasie, a 59-year-old resident of...

• How Restaurants Cut Corners: Embalmed Shrimp and Headless Beer

  It's not just Olive Garden. Many restaurants save costs with a little sleight of handOlive Garden's unsalted pasta water is just the beginning of the chamber of horrors that is the modern restaurant's kitchen. To save a few pennies, restaurants are...

• Food and Mood: What You Eat Affects Your Mood

  A good meal can comfort you and bring back pleasant memories. But are there any superfoods that are guaranteed to put a smile on your face?In Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, the narrator depicts the "powerful joy" that a tea-soaked madeleine awakes...

• Marcus Wareing: 'I Eat the Potatoes First, Then the Stuffing, Then the Meat'

  The MasterChef judge is far from alone. Rather than balancing the flavours, lots of people eat their food in a specific order. Some can't even bear different foods to touch on the plateMarcus Wareing is telling me the order in which he attacked his Sunday...

• Some Dishes Just Aren't Made for Sharing

  Some filthy food secrets are simply unforgivable. Best that you keep them behind closed doorsRecently I became a national hate figure. Not since I admitted I thought negronis taste like bad dental mouthwash, have I felt so reviled. Apart from the time...

• When Chicken Fingers Come Off the Menu

  When a friend mentioned last year that her 7-year-old daughter had gone vegan, I stifled a sigh of relief. "Thank God I'm not raising children in Brooklyn," was my smug little thought.What a fool I was. This summer, my 9-year-old returned from sleep-away...

• Charles Spence: The Food Scientist Changing the Way We Eat

  An Oxford professor's research into what affects flavour, from who we eat with to background noise, has influenced food-industry giants and top chefs alike. Now his new book brings food science to the home cook, tooCharles Spence will eat just about...

• What Americans Really Eat - and Tweet

  A state-by-state analysis of the food-related words that Americans post on Twitter reveals some interesting trends about diet and health. Who knew that durian fruit was popular in Maine or flan on North Dakota?One of the most common criticisms of Twitter...

• What if We Could Train Our Brain to Prefer Healthy Foods?

  Our brain functions somewhat like a computer. It is like a storehouse of knowledge with a highly established network of information. As matter of fact we know that the brain is also responsible for our actions, reactions and other body functions. Scientifically,...