This is why you don't like broccoli

Blame it on the microbiome . Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts … if none of this can be on your plate despite the fact that everyone tells us that “it is great”, a team of researchers from CSIRO have discovered that in the mouth, the enzymes of these vegetables and bacteria in saliva can produce unpleasant and sulfurous odors. And the levels of these volatile compounds are similar in parent-child pairs, suggesting shared oral microbiomes. They also found that high levels make kids dislike vegetables, which could perfectly explain why some can’t even paint broccoli or cauliflower.

“Significant negative relationships were found between children’s taste scores for raw cauliflower and their oral microbiome,” the study explains. “Although negative relationships were found for the same ions for the adult group, they were not significant.”

According to the work, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry , it has to do with something called S-methyl-ʟ-cysteine sulfoxide : a “unique substrate present in Brassicas that produces sulfur volatiles with active odor” when certain people do so. eat. If that person has the correct levels of certain bacteria in their oral microbiome, the authors explain, it can affect the “mouth odor development” of vegetables, making them taste delicious . And, on the contrary, having high levels of these compounds in the microbiome will make us taste horrible.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study that attempts to measure the differences in the rate of development of sulfur volatiles in saliva between adults and children and the possible impacts on the taste for vegetables,” the authors conclude. ” A significant negative relationship between the degree of volatile sulfur production and children’s liking provides an intriguing new potential explanation for differences in taste for Brassica vegetables, especially in children.”

Referencia: Damian Frank et al. In-Mouth Volatile Production from Brassica Vegetables (Cauliflower) and Associations with Liking in an Adult/Child Cohort. J. Agric. Food Chem, published online September 22, 2021; doi: 10.1021/acs.jafc.1c03889