A study of sourness and saltiness perception in identical and fraternal twins has led researchers to conclude that genetics, as opposed to environment, plays a stronger role in development of sour taste than previously believed. The results of this research were published as “Twin Study of the Heritability of Recognition Thresholds for Sour and Salty Taste” in Chemical Senses, online ahead of the print edition.
Researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia, as well as the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and The University of Queensland, both of Brisbane, Australia, tested 74 pairs of identical twins and 35 pairs of fraternal twins to determine their thresholds for the sourness of citric acid and the saltiness of sodium chloride. They also took environmental factors into consideration, most notably whether the twins had a shared common environment.
Results showed “genetic factors play a larger role than shared environment in determining individual differences in recognition thresholds for sourness.” Conversely, “saltiness recognition included a common environment component.” This led the researchers to conclude that “environment plays a larger role than genetics in determining individual differences in recognition thresholds for saltiness.”
The researchers noted that such studies might help product developers better fine-tune the taste of products to cater to the varied degrees of consumers’ taste sensitivity.
