Paul--

The article that I read about this actually specifically mentions sweet-blockers, i.e.: "We've known how to do that for a hundred years, but who wants to do that?"

It's also described as pretty trivial to block sweetness; we've got maybe two different types of sweetness detectors on our tongue but hundreds of types of bitterness detectors. That makes quite a bit of sense -- most things that are sweet are nutritious; most things that are bitter will kill you. We're rather optimized to not die rather than eat candy :-)

--Dan

Man, I hope that the patent office did its research on this. I don't know about this compound blocking bitter, but I do know of a plant that has been known for thousands of years that has the same effect on sweet. In fact, the sanskrit name for the plant means "killer of sweet". It is a obscure plant, but it absolutely works like its name. Eat a tiny pinch of the ground-up plant (which is of itself flavorless), then eat sugar or honey, and they are completely bland. Well, the honey tastes a bit like flowers, but not in the least sweet. Chocolate tastes very bitter.

It would be interesting to ask the ayurvedic folks if they know about a "killer of bitter" that acts like this.