How Does the Sense of Taste Work?
The sense of taste begins with the taste buds, located on top of the fungiform papillae, or the large bumps on the tongue. Other taste receptor cells can be found on the palate and in the throat, but the tongue has the most. The fungiform papillae are shaped similar to mushrooms and sometimes swell a little when stimulated. Alongside the fungiform papillae are the filiform papillae, little brush-shaped protrusions that lack taste buds. Contrary to what you may have heard, the tongue is not divided into taste sections. This is a myth based on a mistranslation of a German book which has been perpetuated in schools since the early 1900s. If you put a tiny bit of salt or sugar on different sections of your tongue, you’ll see that you can taste it anywhere. The five acknowledged tastes are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Umami could just as easily be called savory, but it is named after the Japanese word for the same thing because a Japanese researcher first discovered it in 1908. Th
I went on an investigative journey, following taste from the first moment food is put into the mouth until the message reaches near the back of the brain, and came home with some exciting facts and conclusions. First I found out that what I learned in highschool was wrong (…see University/Wikipedia does make us smarter…) and there may actually be more than four basic kinds of taste: salty, bitter, sweet and sour. This possible fifth kind of taste is called umami and named after the Japanese word for savory. In order to be a part of the Basic Taste Club (BTC for those who enjoy acronyms, or are studying political science) there must be scientific evidence that there are receptors on the tongue which react specifically to a particular chemical. In the case of the sweet taste (shockingly) this is sugar, and with salty it is sodium ions. So why doesnt umami belong yet? Umamis chemical of choice is glutamate, first discovered by Kikunae Ikeda after a particularly delicious dashi soup th
