Sweet Genes
If you are an avid coffee enjoyer, you are most certainly familiar with the phrase, “how do you like your coffee, black or with cream?” Of course, there are plenty of variations of this phrase, but the gist of it is whether or not you like your coffee bitter or with a little bit of sweetness. As it turns out, researchers from Northwestern discovered that your answer may be influenced by your genes!
One Lump or None?
Coffee consumers that particularly enjoy their coffee black also enjoy dark chocolate and the researchers may know why. They discovered that coffee drinkers that prefer their coffee black also metabolized caffeine much faster than their counterparts that enjoyed their coffee with cream and their chocolate with milk. This connection prompted researchers to look at a key genome that may be responsible for this odd quirk.
Bittersweet
One reason they believe dark coffee enjoyers prefer dark coffee is that they subconsciously associate the bitter taste of the caffeine in coffee and in chocolate with more energy, which does have truth to it. This is interesting as it shows that the taste doesn’t make dark coffee enjoyers flock in droves to their bitter drinks, but the idea of dark coffee is more beneficial to their energy levels makes them consider drinking dark roasts of coffee more often. If you’d like to know why darker roasts of coffee provide more energy, check out our other blog on this topic here!
Next time you wonder why your coworker loves their taste of bitter in the morning, just know they probably can’t help it!
By John Toledo
