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Our food preferences are influenced by numerous factors. A PhD student is to use methods including questionnaires, taste tests and saliva samples to improve understanding of the way these factors affect our food choices.

Our food preferences do not come about by accident. On her PhD project, co-financed to the tune of DKK 1.1 million by the Danish Diabetes Academy, Camilla Cederbye Karlsson MSc will spend the next three years studying Danish people’s taste preferences in order to improve understanding of the mechanisms underlying our eating behaviour.

‘Eating behaviour is complex, and it is influenced by many different factors, including which foods we like and prefer to eat. As excessive consumption of energy-rich foodstuffs is a significant risk factor for type 2 diabetes, it’s important to find out what factors influence eating behaviour. The aim of my PhD project is to find out which foodstuffs Danes like and prefer to eat in order to identify genetic variations in the human hereditary material associated with taste preferences’, says Camilla Cederbye Karlsson.

Taste testing for sweet, salt and fat

For her research, Camilla Cederbye Karlsson will invite up to 100,000 participants to talk about their taste preferences. The focus will be on the six primary tastes: sweet, salt, sour, bitter, umami and fat. A subgroup of respondents with particularly strong and particularly weak preferences for salt, sweet and fat will be invited to take part in further tests.

‘Participants will be presented with different concentrations of the three tastes. We will take blood and saliva samples that will be used to assess interactions between the composition of microbiology in the oral cavity, hormone levels and taste preferences’, says Camilla Cederbye Karlsson, whose research, based at the  Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research,  University of Copenhagen, will include collaboration with the Department of Odontology and the Department of Food Science, also at the University of Copenhagen.

During her PhD project, Camilla Cederbye Karlsson will receive supervision from Associate Professor Niels Grarup PhD, whose research group Cederbye Karlsson has been part of since March 2019. The results of the project will provide a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying human eating behaviour.

‘This knowledge will lay the foundation for future functional and clinical studies, and will encourage therapeutic strategies that can help people with a tendency to consume energy-rich food and who are therefore at increased risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other cardiometabolic diseases, says Camilla Cederbye Karlsson, who goes to Philadelphia in August 2021 for a three-month visit to the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

By Pernille Fløjstrup Andersen, Communications Officer, DDA

Facts

Camilla Cederbye Karlsson MSc, born 1988

Has been awarded DKK 1.1 million by the Danish Diabetes Academy.

PhD project title: Elucidating the genetic background of variation in human food and taste preference.

Research centres: Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen / Monell Chemical Senses Center, Pennsylvania, USA

Contact +45 4119 5095

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Contact Danish Diabetes Academy

Managing Director Tore Christiansen

Email: tore.christiansen@rsyd.dk

Phone: +45 2964 6764