Image1 . Are you a coffee lover(left) or a tea lover(right)?
Coffee, Tea, or Alcohol?
As university students, we spend a good chunk of our money on coffee, tea, and alcohol. These 3 drinks have been controversial topics as they have both beneficial and adverse health effects.
We all have a preferred drink among these 3, and there’s no guarantee that 5 of your closest friends will have the same preference as you. You might have noticed that one of your friends is less sensitive to caffeine’s bitter taste than you. Or, you are a heavier tea drinker than your friend. Well, there is no need to sweat it anymore, because a new study, led by Jue-sheng Ong and Daniel Hwang and published in Scientific Reports, examined around 400,000 people in the UK to see if there is a correlation between a person’s bitter taste perception, drink of choice and their genetic markers.
Image2 . A new study explains why some people love coffee but others think it tastes disgusting.
Coffee!
There’s some good news from their findings. If you are a heavy coffee drinker (>4 cups/day) and the bitter taste of coffee doesn’t bug you, then you can thank or blame your genes. So the next time someone points out that you drink too much coffee, you can tell them that it isn’t your fault that your genes have an increased sensitivity to the bitter flavour of caffeine, thus making you 20% more likely than the average person to be a heavy coffee drinker.
Tea!
Do you drink more than 5 cups of tea per day? Do you prefer tea over coffee? That is because you are more sensitive to the two chemicals (quinine and propylthiouracil) common in tea. This sensitivity is a result of the presence of receptors for those chemicals on your genes. Which makes you 4-9% more likely than the average person to be a heavy tea drinker.
So what?
The researchers suggest that coffee drinkers enjoy the bitterness of caffeine because of the buzz the chemical provides, but tea drinkers do not enjoy the bitterness of the chemicals in those drinks. Therefore, heavy tea drinkers are technically those whose genes have rejected coffee.
What about alcohol?
Unlike tea, for alcohol, a higher intensity of the propylthiouracil chemical reaction resulted in a lower consumption of alcohol. Ignoring the other side effects of alcohol consumption, alcohol’s elicit bitterness in humans might explain why our daily consumption behaviour of coffee and tea doesn’t apply to alcohol (i.e. why we don’t drink alcohol like we might drink coffee and tea daily).
Controversial Topic
While this 2018 paper looked at the underlying genetic reason(s) for our coffee, tea, and alcohol consumption preferences, coffee and tea have always been controversial topics. Their pros and cons have lead to numerous scientific articles, videos, and news articles being published.
An example of a YouTube video on the pros and cons of coffee and tea. (Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csSq4emMwGk)
The coffee vs. tea debate is so big that even famous YouTubers are now discussing it. (Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOGXe7GN2eQ)
