I’ve never thought to chug olive oil before.  Sure, in my household, the speed at which we consume extra-virgin olive oil makes it seem like we’re pouring it down our throats: a dip for French bread, a topping for pasta (with garlic, capers, and a little crushed red pepper, of course), salad dressing—my girlfriend even uses it to make popcorn.

Still, I was surprised the other night, when Gary Beauchamp, the Director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center here in Philadelphia, told me that extra virgin olive oil, when swallowed, produces a burning sensation deep in the throat.  Now, on its own, this piece of information might elicit a quick shrug, and a tossed off “hmmm… never noticed that before,” before the conversation veered in an entirely different direction.

But Beauchamp happens to have a Ph.D. in Biopsychology and has made a career of studying human taste perception.  Thus, when he was sampling extra-virgin olive oils at a tasting while attending a molecular gastronomy conference in Sicily several years ago, he not only noticed a burning—not all over, but concentrated in a single spot—he also recognized the same sensation from elsewhere.  Beauchamp had previously participated in a study run by another researcher at Monell, an institute concerned with the science behind taste and smell, in which participants ingested ibuprofen.  When tasting the olive oil, he quickly realized that ibuprofen produced the exact same response.

Apparently, scientists have known for over forty years that the bitterness of certain compounds correlates to their pharmacological activity.  Beauchamp immediately wondered whether the some component of olive oil might share the same anti-inflammatory properties as ibuprofen.  If so, this could be a key piece of the puzzle in understanding the science behind the success of the so-called “Mediterranean diet.”

With a little lab work, Beauchamp and his associates were able to isolate the compound in extra-virgin olive oil.  They then tested the anti-inflammatory properties of the compound and found that, at the enzymatic level, it functioned in a very similar manner to ibuprofen.  The result was a paper published in Nature, a prize for any scientist.

The irony is that for the layman, it’s easy to dismiss research into taste and sensation as little more than an exploration in hedonism.  But here, thanks to an existing body of research into taste, Beauchamp was able to turn an olive oil tasting—a foodie’s delight—into a scientific discovery.

And by the way, it’s true.  That bottle of good olive oil I have at home— when I gulped it down last night, it did burn my throat.

Courtesy of WineAccess.com