Does eating a banana change the taste of coffee?

May 29, 2018 12:21 PM

I ate a banana, then drank a pour-over coffee, and the coffee was super-bitter the first few sips. I don't remember this happening before, and after a few minutes/additional sips, the taste went back to it's normal, mellow-self. I hadn't eaten anything else, and it was a coffee shop that typically does good pour overs. Did eating the banana change my experience of the coffee?

Incidentally, I tried to google "does eating a banana change the taste of coffee", and a significant number of 1st page results are about oral sex. So I know the answer to that one, but I'm still flummoxed by my coffee-related experience.

posted by Gorgik to Food & Drink (11 answers total)

something similar happens to me with pineapple so maybe yes? like even drinking plain water after eating pineapple tastes horrible, but it goes away after a minute or so.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:23 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I would imagine it has to do with how sweet the banana was - the coffee would seem extra bitter in comparison until the lingering sweetness faded and you could taste the coffee normally again.
posted by hepta at 12:25 PM on May 29, 2018 [14 favorites]

Best answer: Dunno about the chemistry, but yes. Bananas make a lot of things taste different for me. Underripe bananas slightly coat the tongue and make bitter things more bitter, while ripe ones are sweet enough to make sour things (citrus e.g.) taste even more sour. A good pour-over is both bitter and acid, and your experience correlates well with my own.
posted by aspersioncast at 12:42 PM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Hmm, I've never heard this with bananas specifically (But I have with pineapples, to line up with poffin boffin's theory), but there are several fruits out there that have tannins in them that can mess with your taste in drastic ways (for varying amounts of time). Tannins are weird. Sometimes folks attribute a tannic flavor with bitterness, but the same astringency-weird-dryness can occur with plenty of sweetness around.

My bet is on tannins, but this is just conjecture.

Say 'banana-tannin' aloud. Lol.
posted by furnace.heart at 1:07 PM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: You got me curious enough to go looking through a bunch of scientific papers which I only vaguely understood, but what I did discover is:

1. They are still figuring out just exactly how bitterness is sensed by the body and it's apparently very complex, moreso than some of the other tastes - it seems to be a very active area of research
2. Various compounds in foods activate different receptor pathways in your mouth/digestive system which may remain 'open' or 'activated' for a little while after you're done eating
3. Some of these pathways are shared between different types of flavor compounds

So my extremely lay take on this: something in the banana, either a faint bitter compound similar to something in the coffee or else a sugar or acid which happens to share the same pathway as something in the coffee, opened up some particular pathway in your flavor receptors which then made them hyper-sensitive to the bitterness of the coffee.

"Bitter taste receptor activation" is the search term which gave me the most relevant-seeming info, if you'd like to check this out more yourself!
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:55 PM on May 29, 2018 [6 favorites]

You're eating all the forms of sugar there are in eating a banana, it would be odd if there weren't some forms of interaction in the ol' pie-hole upon eating or drinking something else afterwards.
posted by Chitownfats at 6:46 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Occasionally, and I haven't yet narrowed down what food is the trigger, my coffee will suddenly and decidedly taste like pencil shavings. I can totally buy into a banana making it bitter for a few sips.

Note - I don't regularly go around tasting pencil shavings.<
posted by MandaSayGrr at 6:48 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Want another experience that's every bit as disconcertingly awful? Try drinking orange juice right after brushing your teeth.
posted by flabdablet at 8:17 PM on May 29, 2018

I have this experience at BBQ joints. I drink southern sweet tea, and for desert I'll eat banana pudding which is even sweeter than the tea.

The first sip of the tea after eating the banana pudding tastes almost un-sweetened.
posted by gregr at 11:08 AM on May 30, 2018

Oh! As an experiment take two cups and add 4oz of warm water. Put one tablespoon of sugar in one cup, and 4 tablespoons of sugar in the other cup. Stir until the sugar all dissolves.

Take a few sips from the one spoon cup, wait a minute, and take a few sips from the four spoon cup, and then go back to the one spoon cup.

I'd bet the one spoon cup at the end doesn't taste sweet at all.
posted by gregr at 11:11 AM on May 30, 2018

Response by poster: Thanks all!
posted by Gorgik at 3:46 PM on May 30, 2018