The UK's Taste for Science

Devonshire teas, Cheddar cheese and other West Country foods have been named the favourite regional foods of the UK. This is just one tasty fact found out by research mapping out taste preferences of the UK's major regions.

Professor Andy Taylor, an expert in flavour technology at The University of Nottingham and Greg Tucker a leading food psychologist proved that each region in the UK has its own unique ‘Taste Dialect’ of flavours and textures which have been forged by culture, geography and the environment.

Some other key findings include:

1) Scots are the slowest eaters but love mouth-melting creamy foods.

2) People from the North East seek tastes that offer immediate satisfaction, borne from a history of hungry heavy industry workers demanding foods that offer immediate sustenance.

4) The Midlands, known to be the Balti centre of the UK, were predisposed to enjoy Asian food long before it arrived in the UK. The region's taste dialect is for soft, suckable foods that impact the front of the tongue, and which can be eaten with their hands like naan.

5)The South: A melting pot of people and cultures from all round the UK and abroad, have a melting pot of preferences and have the least defined taste dialect of all the regions.

6) A quarter of Brits said that London was where they'd had their worst taste experience.

What amazing, yet utterly useless things to know! Part of me is incredulous as to how this research was approved let alone funded. The other part of me can't help being intrigued by it. I don’t know whether this research will improve our lives; but I do know that I will be bringing out one of these little morsels of information when I am next out to dinner, improving the occasion for everyone present. Perhaps there is a pool of funding for dinner table facts?