Exercise boosts sugar’s taste
By Janet Raloff
From Washington, D.C., at the Experimental Biology 2004 meeting
People who work out regularly often report a feeling of euphoria after exercise. Wondering how exercise affects other sensations, scientists at the Osaka (Japan) University of Health and Sport Sciences evaluated taste thresholds in competitive runners. The researchers report that the volunteers’ sensitivity to sweetness increased greatly after their endurance training.
Koji Okamura and his colleagues recruited six male and five female athletes for taste tests immediately before and after their 2-to-3-hour training sessions. On each of three test days, the athletes fasted for at least 3 hours before the first taste test. The researchers gauged the runners’ sensitivity to sweetness by successively placing on their tongues paper dots soaked in sucrose solutions of increasing strength.