Cigarettes and Taste Buds: A Volatile Relationship

By Rachel Stockton (rachels@foodconsumer.org)

My father, an avid collector of old National Geographic , Reader's Digest and Life magazines showed me an advertisement for a certain brand of cigarette (which shall remain nameless) that claimed their cigarettes were the ones that "Doctors Recommend Most."

Although that seems so foreign it's almost funny, the truth is there was a time when the American public was clueless about the dangers of nicotine. Whether or not the tobacco companies knew but didn't tell the masses is an argument that has legal and ethical repercussions to this day.

Cigarettes strike a death blow to several organs of the human body:  the heart, lungs, esophagus.  And a new study conducted by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki verifies another organ cigarettes claim as their victim: the tongue.

For the study, 62 soldiers were tested; the journal BMC Ear, Nose, and Throat Disorders reports that researchers on the project discovered that smokers have fewer and flatter taste buds with a reduced blood supply.

The tongue is an interesting and surprisingly efficient organ.  Healthy taste buds are spherical clusters of receptor cells that allow us to "screen" what we eat thru taste as soon as saliva begins breaking it down for digestion.  Electrical stimulation provided researchers with a glimpse of what cigarettes actually take away from the tasting process.  The 28 soldiers who smoked had significantly lower taste test scores than the 34 non-smokers.

In 2007, Duke University also conducted a taste test among 209 smokers in an effort to determine what role food plays in altering the taste of cigarettes.

The journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research reported that certain foods actually worsen the taste of cigarettes themselves.  Milk, water, fruits and vegetables all made the cigarettes less palatable, while alcohol, meat and coffee enhanced the taste.  This might explain why coffee and alcohol trigger cravings in ex-smokers.

Smokers who smoked menthol cigarettes were less likely to report that cigarette taste was altered by food.  This led some of the researchers to believe that the menthol covers up any changes in the taste of food that other smokers experience.

The lead researcher of the 2007 study, Joseph Mclemon, assistant professor at Duke Medical Center claimed that in the not-too-distant future researchers will come up with a "Quit Smoking" diet that will ease up some of the discomfort associated with smoking.