Did you know that the need for sweets may be written in your genes? Of all the senses, taste is the one that can give the most pleasure. Scientists are increasingly surprised by how exactly taste affects our brain. That's also why we present you with 6 facts about taste, which will make you look at this sense completely differently from now on!
Taste is extremely important and complex sense. That's also why we present you some really amazing facts with a taste.
1. Our brain actually tastes food multi-layered with several senses, including smell
When you bite into juicy cake, you will feel an explosion of flavor in your mouth, or so it will seem. We taste with the brain. Taste sensors - the taste buds send food molecules to the olfactory nerves at the tip of the nose. The smell signal then travels to the facial and glossopharyngeal nerves, which communicate directly with gustatory cortex in the brain. And the moment the signal reaches the cortex is the moment we taste. This is why some people may permanently lose their sense of taste or smell after brain damage. Taste is an extremely complex sense!
2. The smell of ham can make our food more salty
There is an entire industry dealing with flavors and our perception of taste. Big food manufacturers employ chemists whose sole job is to find the perfect flavor combinations that the brain won't be able to resist. Part of this science is the appearance of these phantom aromas. For example, scientists have found that the brain associates ham with the taste of salty, so by adding a mild aroma of ham to food, our brain will perceive it as saltier than it actually is. The same happens with the addition of vanilla, which people associate with a sweet taste.
3. Catfish is the animal with the best sense of taste
You may be surprised that it is the animal with the best developed sense of taste actually a fish. It is a catfish that can have an average of 100.000 to 175,000 taste buds. In comparison, man has them up to 10.000. The reason why there are so many of them is that taste buds are not only in the mouth, but all over the body, and the largest concentration of them is in the whiskers of the catfish. Catfish lives in dark and muddy waters, so instead of sight, he developed a sense of taste, which makes it easier to find food.
4. We all have a different number of taste buds
The number of taste buds is different for each individual and can vary between 2.000 and 10.000. Most of them are located on the tongue, but some are also distributed on the inside of the mouth, throat and esophagus. As we age, our taste buds become less sensitive, and scientists believe this is why we like foods or drinks that we didn't like when we were younger. So our taste changes because the perception of taste changes.
5. Taste is also a trigger for memories
You drank a beer in the shade of the terrace and your memories immediately took you back several decades, to the moment when you drank on your first solo trip with friends cold beer. This happens because memories are closely associated with tastes, as well as smells. Indeed, scientists have discovered a connection between the part of the brain responsible for memory and the part which encodes time and space.
6. We inherited some favorite tastes from our parents, including an excessive love of sweets
Chemist Arthur Fox accidentally released the chemical compound PTC (phenylthiourea) into the air in 1931. His colleague then complained that the taste of the powder was extremely bitter, but it was neutral to Fox. So they decided to do some research among friends and family and found that there really is a difference in whether people perceive the taste of PTC as bitter or as neutral. It was later found that the taste perception of PTC was determined by a gene TAS2R38, and in 2005, the same gene was linked to how much someone likes the taste of sweets. This means that there is a possibility that it can be your great love for sweets conditioned by the gene you inherited!
