Many children, as well as adults, dislike Brassica vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. In the mouth, enzymes from these vegetables and from bacteria in saliva can produce unpleasant, sulfurous odors. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ ‘Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry’ have found that levels of these volatile compounds are similar in parent-child pairs, suggesting shared oral microbiomes. They also found that children whose saliva produced high amounts of sulfur volatiles disliked raw Brassica vegetables the most, but this relationship was not seen in adults, who might learn to tolerate the flavour over time.
Comments are closed.