The taste of human blood . . .

efreysson

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I was wondering if diet or something else might affect the way human blood tastes, to a creature with a sharper sense of taste than humans.
I have this idea for a vampire who feeds on a certain victim and loves the taste so much that she comes back later for another go, and I'm wondering what the cause could be.
 

Millicent M'Lady

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I know I've read that strong flavoured foods can have a direct effect on body scent and other bodily fluids (I'll leave which ones to your imagination!) but a sweet or spicy diet can especially affect these.

Don't know if that helps at all and I could not find a link which talks about flavours in the blood but animals are often given special diet to change the flavour of their flesh so it wouldn't be such a stretch to imagine that certain humans might taste different to a vampire.

It might be an interesting twist to suggest that the victim is something like a cocaine addict and that the vampire might get addicted to the narcotic in her bloodstream.

I found this on the science direct website (it requires a subscription so I can't add a full link) but vampire bats have been shown not to have an aversion to certain food sources even though it has had an ill-effect on them.

Although three dietary generalists (one insectivorous and two frugivorous bats) readily acquired taste aversions, the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, a monophageous feeder on vertebrate blood, did not learn to associate a novel flavour with aversive gastrointestinal events. We interpret these data as consistent with the hypothesis that taste aversions are an adaptive specialization of learning

Could this maybe work for your purposes?
 
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DeleyanLee

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It's said that eating a lot of garlic makes you unappetizing to mosiquitoes. Don't know if that's the kind of thing you're looking for, though.
 

Millicent M'Lady

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It's said that eating a lot of garlic makes you unappetizing to mosiquitoes. Don't know if that's the kind of thing you're looking for, though.

That's a good point actually. There is a certain flavour to mine and my dad's blood (but no one else in my family- yay, thanks for the nummy blood inheritence dad!) that makes mosquitos go hog-wild. Seriously, it's like Christmas for them and I'm the ham anytime I'm anywhere with mosquitos.:D
 

Puma

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I've heard somewhere that people who don't eat a lot of red meat are not as appealing to mosquitos. I think there's something to this because mosquitos eat my husband and daughter alive and leave me alone (I've never been a big meat eater, they are). Puma
 

AngelRoseDarke

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I have never really noticed much difference due to certain foods. I can tell you that someone with a diet high in iron will have a metalic taste to their blood, and an anemic person will have a more smooth flavor.
 

GeorgeK

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I was wondering if diet or something else might affect the way human blood tastes, to a creature with a sharper sense of taste than humans.
I have this idea for a vampire who feeds on a certain victim and loves the taste so much that she comes back later for another go, and I'm wondering what the cause could be.

Supposedly the reason for the higher rate of type B blood in Africa is due to mosquitoes preferring to feed on Type O and then Type A, and then on B, in effect causing a higher death rate among the other blood types from Malaria etc., giving a selection bias favoring survival of those with Type B. So some genetic trait, that need not even be explained other than a common ancestry would work.

As far as diet, you'd probably need some sort of small molecule that can get into the blood unchanged, like alcohol. I'd certainly accept a plotline where the vamp likes to feed on frat boys who've had a few beers first.
 
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efreysson

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As far as diet, you'd probably need some sort of small molecule that can get into the blood unchanged, like alcohol. I'd certainly accept a plotline where the vamp likes to feed on frat boys who've had a few beers first.

Hmm. What other small molecule would get into the blood unchanged?
 

Tiz_Mee

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I did a search on blood tests.

Hey, maybe this guy has a high sugar count and he tastes sweet. Maybe he has high testosterone levels and it kicks her libido into overdrive.

Hemoglobin--an iron rich protein.

Or maybe the guy has high cholesterol. Fatty foods are to die for!!
 

Fenika

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Hormones, drugs (most), what others mentioned, extra WBCs (or less) (btw, if a vamp had a thing for neutrophils in the blood, he'd tease his victims for a few minutes, as stress causes neutrophilia) (it can also cause the spleen to contract and release more red blood cells. At least I think it does in humans.) Where was I? Toxins, protiens (immune mediated and albumin and all that stuff).

So on.

Maybe he likes insulin b/c it gives him a little high/kick. So he goes after those with high insulin for w/e reason (including after a meal)
 

Rabe

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I've heard somewhere that people who don't eat a lot of red meat are not as appealing to mosquitos. I think there's something to this because mosquitos eat my husband and daughter alive and leave me alone (I've never been a big meat eater, they are). Puma

And yet...being vegetarian and not recalling the last time I've had red meat...I'm still a tasty bag of snackin for mosquitoes.

Another friend of mine swears that a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar also is a natural repellent to mosquitoes. His wife gives it to their kids every day and swears it works.

Me, I'd rather go the yummy garlic route.

Rabe...
 

Kathie Freeman

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Anything that causes strong breath or body odor will show up in the blood. I can smell a heavy smoker 10 feet away, even if they've showered and put on clean clothes.
 

Perks

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The good news is that not enough people will know better, thank god, if you decide to write it in.

The hate mail you'll get from those who might know better will probably just hit the spam filter anyway.

I wonder how Spam makes blood taste?
 

Nianne

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Well, diet affects the flavor of meat

What an animal eats will affect the flavor of the meat, so I assume it would be the same for blood.

For example, if someone had a huge thing for rosemary, or sauerkraut, or something else with a really stront, distinctive smell, I imagine that would come through...

Something like the sugar or meat content of their diet, I'm not sure that would be as discernable.
 

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I was wondering if diet or something else might affect the way human blood tastes, to a creature with a sharper sense of taste than humans.
I have this idea for a vampire who feeds on a certain victim and loves the taste so much that she comes back later for another go, and I'm wondering what the cause could be.


Yes, diet does change the taste and composition of blood. For example, skeeters (those all hated bugs from our summer months) and black flies are attracted to people with more potassium in their blood. Eating bananas causes the potassium in our blood to rise in levels, attracting them to us.

The taste of blood is ...unique to each individual (yes I speak from experience, I went through a very goth\real vamp phase in my late teens and in college).

In another way, emotions can either sweeten or sour the blood (according to some). There are several "real vampire" types of feeding.

Elemental - feeding off the elements
chaotic - feeding off of chaos such as war torn areas, street fights, ect
sanguinarian - blood feeders
psychic - feeding off of the psychic energies of another such as life force
tantric - feeding off of the sexual release (climax) of someone
emotional - feeding off the feelings of another

There are much more than that but those are just off the top of my head. There is a common denominator in all of these. The source affects the blood in all of these different forms of feeding practices (even blood feeders or blood letting). Everything we feel, do, see, ingest or don't ingest affects the chemistry of our blood and body. A very good reason for a vampire to prefer a particular "donor" so to speak is their blood chemistry.
 

icerose

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Milk is also affected. If you feed a cow thistle you'll get extremely bitter milk, if you feed it sweet grass and carrots it will have very sweet milk. So yes, diet would definitely effect taste.
 

efreysson

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For example, if someone had a huge thing for rosemary, or sauerkraut, or something else with a really stront, distinctive smell, I imagine that would come through...
.

Hmm . . . rosemary. That could work pretty well. Can someone confirm this?
 

GeorgeK

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What an animal eats will affect the flavor of the meat, .

Actually that's a common misconception that even most farmers and most meat processors don't understand. It's one of those short answer/long answer dilemmas. What really affects the flavor of the meat is the health of the animal. Farmer X's pigs don't taste as good as Farmer Y's, not because Y uses special pig feed number 2, but because famer X's pigs are stressed from a poor environment and are not as healthy. (That's a few volumes reduced into 2 sentences.)

OTOH, what is eaten is digested, broken into much smaller molecules and transported via the blood to everwhere else. So yes the nutrients (and some poisons) do get into the blood and the other stuff is left to pass through the gut. However this is at the micro, not the macro level. You can't season meat by feeding spices to the pig.

On the third hand, the vamp is presumably biting the neck and will smell the person's breath and body odor/scent. That would be a bouquet or stench that is not actually in the blood, but would be part of the overall vamp feeding experience. You have your favorite meal on two tables. One table has been smeared with rat urine, the other with a spritz of your favorite beverage. Which table do you sit at first?

So for the OP, you could do anything you want as long as it is explained in a plausible fashion.
 
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GeorgeK

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Milk is also affected. If you feed a cow thistle you'll get extremely bitter milk, if you feed it sweet grass and carrots it will have very sweet milk. So yes, diet would definitely effect taste.

I've often seen this as an anecdote but have never seen any hard science to back it up. Milk is produced. It is not a stomach filtrate. Given freechoice, cattle are grazers more than browzers. Thistle is what browsers like such as goats. When they eat thistle, their milk is just fine. It stands to reason that a cow fed what it wants is going to be less stressed and therefore healthier than the cow fed something it will eat if its hungry but doesn't really like. Happy cows make good milk.

You may it's splitting hares (sorry for the farm pun given the thread) because ultimately diet does affect the flavor, but by a much more indirect route.
 
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Nianne

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The primary reason why I say that diet affects the taste of the meat, and what made me think of rosemary as an example, is the case of antelope.

An antelope that came from part of the country where there is sagebrush, will taste (and smell) very much like sage.

An antelope that comes from a place where there is not much sagebrush, will taste more like beef.

There are arguements about what exactly causes or increases the sagey taste, but most people agree that diet is at least a strong contributor. You can find websites discussing this phenomenon.

This is also the case with mule deer.
 

TabithaTodd

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The primary reason why I say that diet affects the taste of the meat, and what made me think of rosemary as an example, is the case of antelope.

An antelope that came from part of the country where there is sagebrush, will taste (and smell) very much like sage.

An antelope that comes from a place where there is not much sagebrush, will taste more like beef.

There are arguements about what exactly causes or increases the sagey taste, but most people agree that diet is at least a strong contributor. You can find websites discussing this phenomenon.

This is also the case with mule deer.

I tend to agree with you. Coming from a land of hunters and fishers here in Northern Ontario we eat bear, deer and moose. I find their diets make for very different taste effects on the meat consumed.
 

wannawrite

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I've often seen this as an anecdote but have never seen any hard science to back it up. Milk is produced. It is not a stomach filtrate. Given freechoice, cattle are grazers more than browzers. Thistle is what browsers like such as goats. When they eat thistle, their milk is just fine. It stands to reason that a cow fed what it wants is going to be less stressed and therefore healthier than the cow fed something it will eat if its hungry but doesn't really like. Happy cows make good milk.

You may it's splitting hares (sorry for the farm pun given the thread) because ultimately diet does affect the flavor, but by a much more indirect route.

LOL...we have a Jersey cow that we milk by hand every day. Last summer, she got out of our pasture and into a patch of weeds in the neighbors field. Ate her fill. That night when we milked her, it was sour, and stayed sour for almost two weeks. Perfectly healthy cow. Free range. No hormones, antibiotics, no other changes in diet or water. No additional stresses (she was perfectly happy moseying around in the neighbors field, not mooing, or trying to get back. Just...eating and chewing her cud)

If it wasn't the weeds that made her milk sour, what was it? Seriously. We had to throw out milk for almost two full weeks. She was not ill. No runny nose. Eyes clear. Good appetite. Regular vigor. *shrugs*

Just curious what you might think. That's all.
 

GeorgeK

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LOL...we have a Jersey cow that we milk by hand every day. Last summer, she got out of our pasture and into a patch of weeds in the neighbors field. Ate her fill. That night when we milked her, it was sour, and stayed sour for almost two weeks. Perfectly healthy cow. Free range. No hormones, antibiotics, no other changes in diet or water. No additional stresses (she was perfectly happy moseying around in the neighbors field, not mooing, or trying to get back. Just...eating and chewing her cud)

If it wasn't the weeds that made her milk sour, what was it? Seriously. We had to throw out milk for almost two full weeks. She was not ill. No runny nose. Eyes clear. Good appetite. Regular vigor. *shrugs*

Just curious what you might think. That's all.

As open and shut as this might seem on the surface, it is still an anecdote, a series of one, and retrospective at that. I know a dairy farmer who when he was a teenager, his brother would sneak into the barn while he was milking and blare a compressed air horn, startling everything and everyone in the barn, in an effort to play a prank on his brother. After a couple days of this the milk tasted off and could not be sold to the local dairy. Niether are science and are not applicable to all creatures, not even all cattle. There are too many variables. Eating things one is not used to when one is otherwise on a very regimented diet is certainly a stressor. In countries where bovines are milked but not fenced, they don't seem to report these things. Maybe it does happen, but they just put the milk into yogurt or cheese and that covers the off flavors? Put a kid in a candy store unsupervised, and he gorges on confections. 2 hours later he seems happy, but over the next several days he will have all possibilities of GI problems. The candy is out of his system by then, but he's still not feeling well. My guess is the vamp would walk past that kid without an inkling of feeding.

When you say, "if cows eat weeds they have sour milk;" it is very different than saying, "if a cow who is normally manger fed on commercial feed pellets, suddenly eats four wheelbarrows of weeds in one sitting then that cow might have sour milk."

In a similar way "Falling will almost always kill you"; is not the same as Falling off the roof of a scyscraper will almost always kill you."

I doubt it's spcifically and only the weeds. I think it's highly likely that any radical change in the animal's daily schedule, diet, sleep, typical habits, things we might not even think about, like if it is the usual person is doing the milking and are they wearing suddenly different looking or smelling clothes? Often things taken to the extreme become wrong because the part does not always resemble the whole.

Add to that, that cattle are ruminants. Their biology of digestion is different. They use fermentation. When making wines it is possible to produce ethers and esters, nice small molecules that will get into the blood and have all sorts of breakdown products, which probably would get into milk. If that is what's going on, then it might not be the weeds per se but that the cow had a high sugar load and managed to get a variety of yeast and compatable bacteria to cause a chain reaction.

To test this you could mix some distillers yeast into a 5 gallon bucket of corn syrup and a large supply of water. Leave it out for the cow as free choice and then taste the milk over the next week while keeping a journal. Oh and to make it statistically significant you will need at least twenty cattle. (It's obvious why nobody wants to test this, because cattle are expensive, and milking them is real work. You'd proabably need a government grant to even study it so as to offset the risk in case it kills the cows)

I'm not saying that these anecdotes are worthless, far from it. I'm just saying that the whole issue is too complex to ignore all but one variable.
 
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