Just a Pinch of Salt Can Make Your Coffee Smoother, Denser, and Less Bitter
If you think about it, for most people, coffee is an acquired taste. Mainly because coffee without embellishment is generally bitter. So how do we deal with that? Got salt? People deal with that in two ways. Either they pump up their brew with sweeteners and creamers—or they learn to love the bitterness, becoming a ‘black coffee’ person. Studies have shown that people who learn to love bitter, black coffee associate that bitterness with coffee’s stimulating effects. But there are some people who just love the taste of bitter. Our palates have been conditioned to respond to bitter tastes. Consuming bitter food and beverages can have a cleansing effect in the body, but bitterness is also associated with certain toxins. There's more: Bitter-tasting food and drink are widely used symbolically, such as the role of horseradish at the Passover seder, or the Chinese concept of “eating bitter” as a metaphor for resilience. I love bitter stuff---coffee, grapefruit, wasabi, tabasco sauce