Affiliations
Member, Monell Chemical Senses Center
Education
Ph.D., Physiological Psychology; University of California, Los Angeles
Research Summary
My research interests are broadly focused on taste and nutrition. One area involves topics related to mineral appetite, including calcium taste and appetite, the physiology of salt intake, appetite specificity, and how the post-ingestive consequences of minerals influence taste preferences. Another area involves the genetics of taste perception, including the preferences for alcohol, sweetness, saltiness, phosphorus and calcium. A third area involves characterizing the environmental contribution to individual differences, particularly the influences of early environment, husbandry procedures, and food choice on taste preferences and dietary obesity. Recently, I have been studying mice fed cafeteria diets to understand the contribution of food choice to the development of human obesity.
Keywords
specific appetite, calcium, taste genetics, ingestive behavior, obesity
Representative Publications
Tordoff, M.G.; Pearson, J.A.; Ellis, H.T.; Poole, R.L. (2017) Does eating good-tasting food influence body weight? Physiology & Behavior, 170: 27-31.
Tordoff, M.; Jiang, P.; Valmeki, S.; Aleman, T.; McCaughey, S. (2015) Heightened avidity for trisodium pyrophosphate in mice lacking Tas1r3. Chemical Senses. 40, 53-9.
Saitou, K.; Lees, J.N.; Tordoff, M.G. (2014) Taste hedonics influence the disposition of fat by modulating gastric emptying in rats. PLoS ONE, 9, e90717.
Tordoff, M.G.; Downing, A.; Voznesenskaya, A. (2014) Macronutrient selection by seven inbred mouse strains and three taste-related knockout strains. Physiology and Behavior, 35, 49-54.
Tordoff, M.G.; Ellis, H.T.; Aleman, T.R.; Downing, A.; Mrambaud, P.; et al. (2014) Salty taste deficits in CALHM1 knockout mice. Chemical Senses. 39, 515-28.
