Free Fatty Acids: Short Exposure Study

Overview

This study will examine whether or not short, daily exposures change a person's ability to detect free fatty acids in a solution by its taste. Repeated exposure should improve a person's ability to detect free fatty acids.

The possibility that humans can taste non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) - so-called fat taste - is a relatively new area of research. Previous work suggests that subjects require an average of between two and three testing sessions of approximately an hour each before they can reliably detect NEFA, and the average number of visits to get the lowest threshold is six. Streamlining this process is of great interest to researchers who wish to test many people as quickly as possible. Other taste qualities, including umami and sweet, have shown improvement in detection sensitivity in subjects that have undergone ten second exposures to these taste qualities for 10 days upon subsequent re-testing. We seek to determine if the same improvements can be seen with fat taste.

Conditions

Interventions

Eligibility

Locations (1)

Outcomes