6 Minute English / Bitter food, better health?

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Phil.

And I m Beth. Phil, I'm going to start this episode with grapefruit - I've got some here - do you want some?

Er, I'm not that keen on grapefruit - they're too bitter for me.

Oh, that's a shame, because this episode is all about bitter food. It has actually been linked to a number of health benefits. So maybe you should take my grapefruit.

I might not like it that much, but in this programme, we ll be finding out how bitter foods can benefit our health. And, of course, we ll be learning some useful new vocabulary.

That should give you a taste of what's coming up, but before that, if you want to learn vocabulary to talk about world events - search for our News Review podcast - we look at vocabulary about a major news story every week. But, back to this episode - I have a question for you, Phil. How many different basic flavours can humans taste? Is it:

a) 4?b) 5? or,c) 6?

Hmmm, I can think of bitter, sweet, salty and sour - so I'm going to go with four. I think we can taste 4 basic flavours.

OK, Phil, I ll reveal the correct answer later. Leyla Kazim presents 'The Food Programme' on BBC Radio 4. Here she is talking about some of the possible benefits of bitter food.