Taste
LOQ 19-6
In what ways are our senses of taste and smell similar, and how do they differ?
Like touch, gustation—our sense of taste—involves several basic sensations. Taste’s
sensations were once thought to be sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, with all others stemming from
mixtures of these four (McBurney & Gent, 1979). Then, as investigators searched for
specialized nerve fibers for the four taste sensations, they encountered a receptor for what we
now know is a fifth—the savory, meaty taste of umami, best experienced as the flavor enhancer
monosodium glutamate (MSG).
Tastes exist for more than our pleasure (see TABLE 19.1). Pleasureful tastes attracted our
ancestors to energy- or protein-rich foods that enabled their survival. Aversive tastes deterred
them from new foods that might be toxic. We see the inheritance of this biological wisdom in
today’s 2- to 6-year-olds, who are typically fussy eaters, especially when offered new meats or
bitter-tasting vegetables, such as spinach and brussels sprouts (Cooke et al., 2003). Meat and
plant toxins were both potentially dangerous sources of food poisoning for our ancestors,
especially children. Given repeated small tastes of disliked new foods, however, most children
begin to accept them (Wardle et al., 2003). We come to like what we eat. Compared with
breast-fed babies, German babies bottle-fed vanilla-flavored milk grew up to be adults with a
striking preference for vanilla flavoring (Haller et al., 1999). The taste-exposure phenomenon
even extends to the womb. In one experiment, babies whose mothers drank carrot juice during
the end of pregnancy and the early weeks of nursing developed a liking for carrot-flavored
cereal (Mennella et al., 2001).
, Taste Indicates
Sweet Energy source
Salty Sodium essential to physiological
processes
Sour Potentially toxic acid
Bitter Potential poisons
Uma Proteins to grow and repair tissue
mi
Taste is a chemical sense. Inside each little bump on the top and sides of your tongue are 200
or more taste buds, each containing a pore that catches food chemicals and releases
neurotransmitters (Roper & Chaudhari, 2017). In each taste bud pore, 50 to 100 taste receptor
cells project antenna-like hairs that sense food molecules. Some receptors respond mostly to
sweet-tasting molecules, others to salty-, sour-, umami-, or bitter-tasting ones. Each receptor
transmits its message to a matching partner cell in your brain’s temporal lobe (Barretto et al.,
2015). Some people have more taste buds than others, enabling them to experience more
intense tastes. Psychologist Linda Bartoshuk (2000) has researched these supertasters and
how they can taste some things that the rest of us cannot.
LOQ 19-6
In what ways are our senses of taste and smell similar, and how do they differ?
Like touch, gustation—our sense of taste—involves several basic sensations. Taste’s
sensations were once thought to be sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, with all others stemming from
mixtures of these four (McBurney & Gent, 1979). Then, as investigators searched for
specialized nerve fibers for the four taste sensations, they encountered a receptor for what we
now know is a fifth—the savory, meaty taste of umami, best experienced as the flavor enhancer
monosodium glutamate (MSG).
Tastes exist for more than our pleasure (see TABLE 19.1). Pleasureful tastes attracted our
ancestors to energy- or protein-rich foods that enabled their survival. Aversive tastes deterred
them from new foods that might be toxic. We see the inheritance of this biological wisdom in
today’s 2- to 6-year-olds, who are typically fussy eaters, especially when offered new meats or
bitter-tasting vegetables, such as spinach and brussels sprouts (Cooke et al., 2003). Meat and
plant toxins were both potentially dangerous sources of food poisoning for our ancestors,
especially children. Given repeated small tastes of disliked new foods, however, most children
begin to accept them (Wardle et al., 2003). We come to like what we eat. Compared with
breast-fed babies, German babies bottle-fed vanilla-flavored milk grew up to be adults with a
striking preference for vanilla flavoring (Haller et al., 1999). The taste-exposure phenomenon
even extends to the womb. In one experiment, babies whose mothers drank carrot juice during
the end of pregnancy and the early weeks of nursing developed a liking for carrot-flavored
cereal (Mennella et al., 2001).
, Taste Indicates
Sweet Energy source
Salty Sodium essential to physiological
processes
Sour Potentially toxic acid
Bitter Potential poisons
Uma Proteins to grow and repair tissue
mi
Taste is a chemical sense. Inside each little bump on the top and sides of your tongue are 200
or more taste buds, each containing a pore that catches food chemicals and releases
neurotransmitters (Roper & Chaudhari, 2017). In each taste bud pore, 50 to 100 taste receptor
cells project antenna-like hairs that sense food molecules. Some receptors respond mostly to
sweet-tasting molecules, others to salty-, sour-, umami-, or bitter-tasting ones. Each receptor
transmits its message to a matching partner cell in your brain’s temporal lobe (Barretto et al.,
2015). Some people have more taste buds than others, enabling them to experience more
intense tastes. Psychologist Linda Bartoshuk (2000) has researched these supertasters and
how they can taste some things that the rest of us cannot.
