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Business Standard : Are you a tea or coffee person? The answer may lie in your genetic predisposition towards bitter tastes, say researchers. It could be because bitterness acts as a natural warning system to protect us from harmful substances. The study, led by researchers from US-based Northwestern University, and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia, explored reactions to three bitter substances -- caffeine, quinine and propylthiouracil (PROP) -- to understand how they affect people's preference for drinking tea, coffee and alcohol. The findings showed that people who were more sensitive to caffeine and were drinking a lot of coffee consumed low amounts of tea. BS In other words, people who have a heightened ability to taste coffee's bitterness -- and particularly the distinct bitter flavour of caffeine -- learn to associate "good things with it". "You'd expect that people who are particularly sensitive to the bitte...

Business Standard : Drinking three to four cups of coffee a day can lower your risk of developing Type-2 diabetes by nearly 25 per cent , suggests a study. The effect of coffee consumption on Type-2 diabetes was found in both men and women. The same protective effect applied to consuming the same amount of decaffeinated coffee , the study showed. It was not just caffeine, but a mix of compounds including hydroxycinnamic acids notably chlorogenic acid, trigonelline, diterpenes eg cafestol and kahweol, and caffeic acid, that is said to be the reason behind the link, said Mattias Carlstrom, Associate Professor from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. The results were presented at 2018 Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Germany. For the study, the team reviewed 30 prospective studies, with a total of 1,185,210 participants. Professor Kjeld Hermansen from the Aarhus University in Denmark, suggests that a number of factors m...

The popular range would pit ITC against the likes of Cadbury's and Nestle in the chocolates segment Diversified conglomerate ITC, which ventured into  Chocolates  and coffee last year with premium offers under the Fabelle and Sunbean brands, is now looking to launch a popular range. Though the brand architecture for the popular range is yet to be finalised, the launch could happen sometime next year. The popular range would pit ITC against the likes of Cadbury’s and Nestle in the chocolates segment. The coffee segment is dominated largely by Nestle and Hindustan Unilever and mass range of coffee would put ITC in competition with some of the premium variants of these players. ITC’s plan is to leverage the equity that it has built with its premium offerings. As Hemant Malik, divisional chief executive, foods division, says, the strategies for chocolates and coffee...