Why Is The Taste Of Prescription Medications Important?

A critically underappreciated aspect of prescription medicine dispensed by a local pharmacy is how it tastes when it is ingested.

The simple explanation for this is that, in the words of Mary Poppins, a spoonful of sugar really can help the medicine literally go down.

Whilst taste is not, nor should it be the first priority when it comes to medication compared to active ingredients, efficacy, therapeutic index and safety, its importance should not be discounted, and it can have a profound effect on health outcomes.

The reasons for this are both quite simple and relatively complex, as are the reasons why not everyone bothers.

What Makes Pills Bitter?

Part of the reason for the often-awful tastes of medication, which usually manifests in uncomfortably bitter tastes on the palate, is the ingredients they are made from.

A lot of medicines that are regularly used, such as aspirin and medical cannabis are bitter because of their active ingredients, which usually derive from roots, barks or leaves of plants that themselves taste bitter to ward off animals.

In some respects this is important in medication as well; as the dose makes the poison, retaining that bitter taste helps in a small way to reduce an overdose.

Does Taste Even Matter?

The taste of medication is not a priority for manufacturers, doctors and pharmacies, because it is more important for a given medicine to work rather than taste nice. There are therefore two hugely differing schools of thought on matters of taste.

The first and most common argues that whilst some medicines such as ibuprofen and other sugar-coated pills are necessarily sweetened to avoid irritating the stomach, flavour additives to pills and liquids could potentially interfere with the function of the medicine or cause unexpected side effects.

As well as this, taste is a matter of taste, and having to produce life-saving prescription medicines in a range of flavours could take time and money away from the ultimate purpose of a medication.

Furthermore, in some cases, it is simply not possible to fully mask certain bitter tastes, although generally in those cases attempts will be made to at least reduce the effects.

On the other hand, one of the biggest barriers to positive healthcare outcomes is adherence. According to the National Institute of Health and Social Care Excellence (NICE), up to half of all long-term medical prescriptions are not taken as directed, and a big barrier to this is the taste of medicines.

Typically, when people taste something they do not like, it creates a negative reinforcement that can make people reluctant to try it again regularly, at least unless they get a taste for it. Whilst a spoonful of sugar or honey would literally help in a case like this, it still creates a potential barrier to care.

This is a particularly major problem for children, who typically have more sensitive taste buds when it comes to bitter tastes and thus could be easily repelled by bitter-tasting medicine that feels and tastes worse than the disease.

As well as this, creating a positive connection between medicine through taste can help to improve the mental well-being of a person taking them, and in turn improve potential outcomes.