Does you body crave the taste of fat?

You always have blamed that craving for cookies and jelly beans on a sweet tooth. However, after eating that double scoop of chocolate chip ice cream, did you figure your fat tooth was the culprit? Conventional wisdom in scientific circles is that fat has no taste and is perceived only through its feel and texture. A discovery by researcher Tim Gilbertson, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, may invalidate such thinking.

He found that fatty acids -- an important component of fats -- produce a noticeable response in the taste cells of laboratory rats. In other words, the rats taste the fat. "This is the first evidence that there is a taste receptor mechanism for fat," Gilbertson notes. Furthermore, the fatty acids appear to stimulate all taste cell -- not just specific cells as might a sweet, sour, or bitter flavor. "This may explain why we perceive fat to have no taste. Since all the cells are responding, the taste may be difficult to pinpoint. One of the major roles of our taste system is nutrient detection, so maybe identifying these fatty acids is a way we detect something our bodies need." The results haven't been tested in humans yet. "But we've played with it...