As an undergrad-physiologist I am now given a little more leash to be openly fascinated by the body and its reflexes, processes and general awesomeness.
Our taste lectures were left my brain baffled at something we take for absolute granted but here’s my top 5 on the Tongue and Taste:
1. Only when I accidentally bite my tongue do I appreciate my brain’s private chat with the intrinsic muscles of my tongue every time I fill my face.
2. The latest theory is that you do in fact taste everything everywhere on the tongue but you are better at tasting certain flavours in certain areas – like the old school ‘taste-map’ but better.
3. The ‘umami’ taste is a ‘savoury’ flavour that is linked to being stimulated by the food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) and is umami is dumped with the blame for you overeating the last time you had a Chinese takeaway. A final word: Pringles.
4. Sweeteners like Aspartame work by binding to the taste receptors for sweet detection on the tongue, but are not an identical shape to standard sugar and therefore bind for a different length of time giving you the ‘sugar-free-aftertaste’.
5. We could get our daily nutritional requirements by chewing on a piece of cardboard but instead, the mind boggles at the variety, delicacy and downright-tastiness of food. From perusing menus with a special someone, whipping out your mum’s famous tray-bake recipe for an occasion, putting the world to rights over a pint or just cooking up a dinner after work more flavoursome than the sum of its parts… taste makes it.
rachelreallyrambles 