1) The sensory receptors that detect sweet, salty, sour, and bitter tastes are in taste buds scattered throughout the tongue—especially in the type buds. fungiform, that look like a microscopic mushroom.
two) Some areas concentrate more taste buds that identify a type of flavor (including the palate, the famous roof of the mouth). dissolved in Spittle, food passes through pores in the surface tissue of the tongue and activates sensors, which send an electrical signal to the brain
3) Deep in the tongue, there are more detectors than bitterness, that identify a substance called quinine. Children do not like vegetables with this flavor. But it’s no use complaining. It’s just our taste buds trying to protect them: in nature, toxic plants are often bitter.
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4) Evolutionary heritage also protects us of the foods sour, detected mainly on the sides from the presence of acids. In nature, sourness corresponds to foods that are not ripe or have already been spoiled by an enzyme.
5) The sensors that capture the sweetness, especially on the tip of the tongue, react to sugar molecules. Our predilection for this flavor also has an evolutionary explanation: sweets are equivalent to energy, essential for the organism.
6) Increased concentration of taste buds that react to food salts salted it’s on the side and tip of the tongue. Our predilection for this flavor, in theory, is linked to the need to replace the salts lost through perspiration. (There is even a fifth taste, umami, detected throughout the tongue. It makes many foods enjoyable, such as mushrooms, tomatoes, and cheese.)
7) cover the nose and put some cinnamon on the tongue. The feeling is that of eating sand. That’s because the tongue only distinguishes between sweet, salty, bitter, sour or umami. About 80% of the taste of food is felt by the nose.
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the best seasoning
Research proves hunger enhances taste
“Hmm, this food is so delicious. Or maybe it’s my hunger!» This logic may be correct. According to a study by the University of Malawi, in Africa, people who go without food for more than 16 hours can more easily feel sweet or salty nuances in food than those who ate half an hour before. Bitterness is perceived equally in all situations.
Club of the tongues
Could your tongue be considered hypersensitive?
The number of taste buds in the mouth can vary greatly, fluctuating up to 100 times from one person to the next. One out of four of us are oversensitive and capable of taste much more than others. It is the case of the “super-experimenters”. Test if you are one of them:
1. Do you consider yourself fat?
( ) Yes No
2. Do you eat bitter vegetables such as eggplant?
( ) Yes No
3. Do you like coffee?
( ) Yes No
4. Are sweets often too bland for you?
( ) Yes No
5. Do you like pepper?
( ) Yes No
RESULT
If you answered NO to most questions, you may be an overexperimenter. Because they have a very refined palate, most of them do not support very intense flavors, such as the bitterness of coffee and of the vegetables.
CONSULTANCY Onivaldo Cervantes, otorhinolaryngologist at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp)
SOURCES Books Musical Hallucinations It is An Anthropologist on Mars, by Oliver Sacks; BBC documentary human senses; newspapers BBC News, Daily Californian It is The Guardian; websites TechWorld It is Umami portal