Artichoke: The bitter compound that makes everything else taste sweet

Artichoke contains cynarin, which temporarily inhibits sweet taste receptors. After consuming cynarin, water tastes sweet. This peculiar sensory effect is actually a clue to cynarin's mechanism, it modulates taste receptors in the same family (TAS2Rs) that control gut bitter-taste signaling, bile secretion, and GLP-1 release. The "artichoke makes water taste sweet" parlor trick is a sensory window into a metabolic mechanism.Publications of interest:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23195882/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34048925/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30120064/