Scientists from American Northwestern Medicine have found out why black coffee lovers tend to prefer darker chocolate. And the point is not at all about the love of bitter taste, writes the publication of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Science First Hand”.
Scientists checked the data of 126 thousand people from the UK Biobank (UK Biobank) and two groups of nurses and medical workers from the United States about their coffee consumption. The participants in the experiment told about their habits: how much coffee they drink, how it is prepared, whether sugar, sweeteners or milk are added.
Most often, research on coffee is now using techniques to search for genetic markers that are associated with “coffee mania”. This time, the researchers expected to find a link between genetic variants associated with the perception of bitter taste, and the choice in favor of one or another type of drink, but it turned out differently.
It turned out that black coffee is preferred by people with certain characteristics of the metabolism of the psychostimulant caffeine. These are point mutations in the AhR and CYP1A2 genes; they encode proteins involved in the metabolism of caffeine. It is these genetic variants that provide a faster metabolism of caffeine in the liver, that is, its stimulating effect disappears faster.
That is, according to scientists, such people drink black coffee not because of the bitter taste, but because for them it is associated with increased mental activity. And these same people prefer dark chocolate, which contains quite a lot of theobromine, a caffeine-like compound that also has a psychostimulant effect.
Source: Rosbalt
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