Why do two things I like to eat sometimes taste so bad when
eaten together? —R. Lange, Houston Biosciences professor Tim
Jacob, who studies smell and taste at Cardiff University in
Wales, mixes up an answer: Among the five tastes, salty, sweet
and umami (meaty or savory) are appetitive, driving us toward
essential nutrients, whereas bitter and sour are aversive,
alerting us to potentially harmful substances. Mixing the
aversive with the appetitive sends conflicting information to
the brain, and confusion is what the senses are trying to avoid
as they supply you with useful, lifesaving information. This
mixed signal is why you reject food that has gone off. You do
not want to eat a blend of the good and the bad. Yet consider
the phrase “sugaring the pill”: pills are medicine and as such
are poisonous in large quantities. They thus taste bitter but
can be made more palatable by a camouflaging sugar coating.
Similarly, coffee can be improved for people who are sensitive
to bitterness by masking its sharpness wit