How diet affects taste sensitivity and preferences

What you eat will affect what you want to eat next

This study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, provides a better understanding of the neurophysiological plasticity of the fruit flies' taste system

In order to maintain ideal health, animals need a balanced diet with the best content of different nutrients

In laboratory experiments, researchers Anindya Ganguly and Manali Dey, led by Anupama Dahanukar, fed adult fruit flies a different diet: a balanced diet, a low-sugar but protein-rich diet, and a high-sugar but protein-rich diet

Researchers report that diet affects dopamine and insulin signals in the brain, which in turn affects the peripheral sensory response of fruit flies.

"We found that diet changed the taste preferences of fruit flies," said Dahanukar, an associate professor of molecular, cellular, and systems biology

For other animals, including humans, this may mean that conservative signaling pathways may play a role in changes in taste caused by diet

"The changes in gene expression seem to be related to this," said Ganguly, who was a graduate student at the University of California, Riverside and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Interestingly, when flies fed an imbalanced diet returned to a balanced diet, their taste sensitivity returned to the baseline level, indicating that the change in taste preference was reversible

Day is a graduate student in Dahanukka’s laboratory.

However, Dahanukka warned that the long-term effects on consumption could be more complicated

Christie Scott and Vi-Khoi Duong joined Dahanukar, Ganguly and Dey's research

Article title

Dietary Macronutrient Imbalances Lead to Compensatory Changes in Peripheral Taste via Independent Signaling Pathways.