The Science Behind Taste
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What happens when you eat a piece of delicious chocolate cake?
Sensation of taste is a chemical process. A human tongue contains about 10,000 taste buds which each contain a gustatory hair. When a person eats something, gustatory hairs come in contact with the molecules that come from the food. The hairs thus stimulate the taste buds. Once stimulated, taste buds are able to send messages to the brain about the taste of what is being eaten. There are 5 different tastes, sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. It used to be believed that only taste buds in certain areas of the tongue were responsible for certain tastes. It has actually been discovered that every single taste bud is able to detect all 5 different tastes.
Therefore, when you eat a piece of chocolate cake, the gustatory hairs interact with the molecules from the cake and stimulate the taste buds to send a message to the brain. The taste buds tell the brain that what you are eating is sweet. Therefore, because your brain determines that what you are eating is sweet, it contributes to your perception of flavor.
In a study done on elementary students, it was found that the color of food can influence our perception of its flavor. Elementary students were blindfolded and asked to drink from two cups. One had 7-Up in it, the other contained Coca-Cola. They drank from each cup and were asked which one was which. The study found that while blindfolded, the children struggled to identify which soda they were drinking. This experiment suggests that although Coca-Cola and 7-Up can be thought of as two totally different drinks, when a person is not able to distinguish them between there vastly different colors (brown for Coca-Cola and green for 7-Up) it can be hard to distinguish the two drinks solely by taste. Therefore, the color of certain foods can influence our perception of their flavor.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/Taste.html
http://www.tastingmenu.com/2008/04/05/the-flavor-of-color/
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/taste1.htm
Sensation of taste is a chemical process. A human tongue contains about 10,000 taste buds which each contain a gustatory hair. When a person eats something, gustatory hairs come in contact with the molecules that come from the food. The hairs thus stimulate the taste buds. Once stimulated, taste buds are able to send messages to the brain about the taste of what is being eaten. There are 5 different tastes, sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. It used to be believed that only taste buds in certain areas of the tongue were responsible for certain tastes. It has actually been discovered that every single taste bud is able to detect all 5 different tastes.
Therefore, when you eat a piece of chocolate cake, the gustatory hairs interact with the molecules from the cake and stimulate the taste buds to send a message to the brain. The taste buds tell the brain that what you are eating is sweet. Therefore, because your brain determines that what you are eating is sweet, it contributes to your perception of flavor.
In a study done on elementary students, it was found that the color of food can influence our perception of its flavor. Elementary students were blindfolded and asked to drink from two cups. One had 7-Up in it, the other contained Coca-Cola. They drank from each cup and were asked which one was which. The study found that while blindfolded, the children struggled to identify which soda they were drinking. This experiment suggests that although Coca-Cola and 7-Up can be thought of as two totally different drinks, when a person is not able to distinguish them between there vastly different colors (brown for Coca-Cola and green for 7-Up) it can be hard to distinguish the two drinks solely by taste. Therefore, the color of certain foods can influence our perception of their flavor.
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/Taste.html
http://www.tastingmenu.com/2008/04/05/the-flavor-of-color/
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/taste1.htm