Spoonful of Sugar Really Might Help Medicine Go Down

HealthDay, August, 2008 by Serena Gordon, HealthDay Reporter

If your child won't take medicine and shuns broccoli at the dinner table, his body may just be hard-wired to respond that way.

"Kids reject the bad taste of medicine, because it's basic biology. Their system is designed to reject that taste, because many toxic substances are bitter and distasteful," explained taste researcher Julie Mennella, from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

Mennella is presenting the latest findings on bitter taste and children Thursday at the American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia.

In previous research, Mennella and her colleagues identified a variation in a taste gene called TAS2R38, and found that children who had inherited one allele from a parent were more likely to be sensitive to bitter tastes, while those...