If you want to quit smoking, it may be a good idea to also cut meat, coffee and alcohol out of your diet, researchers say.

WebMD reported April 5 that a study from Duke University found that these foods and beverages were among the items that made smoking taste better, while things like vegetables, fruit and dairy products made smoking taste bad.

"The conventional wisdom is that cigarette addiction is all about the nicotine," said lead researcher F. Joseph McClernon, Ph.D. "But we are learning more and more it is also about sensory effects like the taste and the smell and the visual experience and the habitual routines of smoking. The taste effects are important."

McClernon and colleagues surveyed more than 200 long-term, pack-a-day smokers about the interaction of smoking, food and drink. Almost 70 percent said that certain foods made cigarettes taste better and 45 percent said some foods made smoking taste worse. "We were surprised that smokers would say anything would make their cigarettes taste worse," said McClernon.

The study found that menthol smokers tended to say that their cigarettes tasted the same no matter what they ate. That's bad news for black smokers trying to quit, since 90 percent of study participants who were black smoked menthols. "This study suggests that menthol lessens the effect of taste deadening or enhancing," said Scott McIntosh, Ph.D., of the University of Rochester, who directs a local smoking-cessation program. "And you are more likely to be addicted if you are not affected by variations in taste and pleasure."

Addiction counselors already advise smokers to eat certain foods when they are quitting, like celery, the researchers noted. "The idea is to get the smoker to do something with the hands and mouth that is not smoking -- but it might actually be good to engage in some of these behaviors before quitting, to alter the taste," McClernon said. "We might ask clinicians to ask patients getting ready to quit to start consuming healthy dairy products also to see if they can alter their smoking behavior that way."

The authors next plan to look into why certain foods make smoking taste good or bad. The study appears in the April 2007 issue of the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.