Imagine biting into an
apple and tasting the juicy flavor of an apple. The first bite and the flavors
fire through your mouth as you crunch into the big red fruit. The little taste
buds we have on our tongues get to decide the flavor of something whether it be
sweet, salty, or sour. But what is taste actually?
Taste is a sensation of
flavor perceived in the mouth (Taste, 2017). According to PubMed Health (2017) our sense of
taste works when the chemical substance that has to do with taste is freed in
the mouth and comes into contact with a nerve cell. It excites the cell by
changing specific proteins in the wall of the cell. This change causes the
sensory cell to transmit messenger’s substances, which in turn activate further
nerve cells. These cells then pass information for a particular perception of
flavor on to the brain. The taste buds on the tongue are where the substance
producing the taste is transformed into a nerve signal. (PubMed Health, 2017)
So what can all these
little taste buds taste? They can detect sweetener in foods that usually have
sugar. The sour taste is something that can come from citrus foods. The salty
part comes from sodium and chloride. Mainly we are tasting table salt. Bitter
taste is brought about by different substances. This could be a reason that our
bodies are able to determine if something has a possibly of being poisonous.
The hot or spicy that we sometimes think is a taste is actually a pain signal sent
by the nerves to our brain (PubMed Health, 2017).
Our tiny little tongue
can detect so many different flavors. Each taste bud represents something
different. So next time you bite into a piece of candy or a pepperoni pizza
just remember the hard work your little tongue does for you!
References
Taste. (2017, April). In Oxford living dictionaries. Retrieved
from https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/taste
PubMed Health. (2017, August 17). How does our sense of taste work? Retrieved
from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0072592/
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