I recently listened to the 2017 "TED Radio Hour" episode "The Five Senses." In it, Colorado-based geneticist Nicole Garneau asked the question, "Are there more than five basic tastes?"
The most commonly accepted basic tastes are sweet, sour, savory, salty and bitter. But Garneau believes there is likely a sixth taste: fat. And she wants to prove it, by proving that we all carry a gene that allows us to detect the fat flavor.
According to Garneau, our ability to taste is the result of many millennia of evolution. Taste preference is innate, she says. It is in our DNA. As a species we evolved to prefer sweetness, which represents energy (think ripe, sugary fruit), over bitterness, which can indicate poison.
So why would we have developed a fondness for fat?
Good fats (think fatty acids found in fish and nuts) are critical in maintaining healthy body tissue, Garneau says, and they must come from food. Garneau says she is confident that fat will soon be accepted as the sixth taste - the importance of which, she says, is simply a better understanding of our bodies and nutrition.
But why stop at six?
"There could be a sixth, seventh, eight, ninth taste," Garneau says.