Abstracts - Association for Chemoreception Sciences

familiarity and cultural differences, may be an important
contributing factor to the hedonic responses to foods and
beverages. Acknowledgements: Oregon State University
Start-up Funds
#P259 POSTER SESSION VI:
PERIPHERAL AND CENTRAL TASTE;
PERIPHERAL OLFACTION
Individual Predictors of Oral Free Fatty Acid Detection and
Triacylglycerol Response
Richard D Mattes
Purdue University W. Lafayette, IN, USA
Dietary fats provide energy as well as essential fatty acids that
serve as precursors for an array of essential bioactive
compounds. Depending on their form, they may also contribute
to increased risk for a variety of chronic diseases as well as acute
malaise. Thus, an orosensory signaling system for fats that aided
ingestive decisions would likely hold adaptive advantages. Under
appropriate conditions, food fats can be detected by all human
sensory systems, with work on taste being the most recent and
incomplete. Measures of detection (thresholds) and
responsiveness (first phase serum triacylglycerol (TG)
concentration (FPTR)) to free fatty acids (FFA) and TG,
respectively, are characterized by high individual variability.
The basis of which is not known. There are mixed reports from
rodent studies and human trials of associations between these
sensory measures and age, sex, BMI, PROP-taster status and
resting TG concentrations. The present analysis explores these
associations (except resting TG and taste thresholds) using a
compilation of data from two human studies for taste thresholds
and 7 human studies of FPTR. BMI was significantly associated
with the mean FPTR (r=0.28, p=0.001) and peak TG (r=0.79,
p