HOW TASTE WORKS - Taste Buds V's Your Sense of Smell

By Linda Murdock

From early home economics courses, we all learned that there are four tastes: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Research in the early 2000s has shown what the Japanese and Chinese have known for decades, that there is a fifth taste known as umami, an amino acid and naturally occurring glutamate. This savory flavor can be found in asparagus, beans, fresh corn and other grains, fish, mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, red wine, bacon, cheeses, aged beef and other fermented and aged foods and sauces.

There may even be a sixth taste for fatty foods. Like the three primary colors that allow our eyes to differentiate thousands of hues, so these five taste receptors combine with the sense of smell to give us a large variety of flavor sensations. But how does it really work?

Modern science has made some breakthroughs in the last ten years on how the brain works with our senses of taste and smell. Some interesting theories suggest that those prone to genetic baldness are also prone to less sensitivity in the strength of their taste buds. It is now known that these buds are not compartmentalized on the tongue in groups that identify sweet, for example. Rather the sweet taste buds are distributed throughout the top of the tongue, along with the other tastes. Scientists also believe that loss of smell can indicate a likely chance that you may suffer from Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease later in life.

The taste buds average below 8000 in number. They decrease after age forty-five. This is significant for middle-aged spice lovers, who may get a negative reaction to their food preparation from their teen-aged children. The spices in the mouth of your young adult child taste much more potent than they do in yours. This is something to consider when experimenting with new seasonings. The elderly, whose taste buds diminish over time, may enjoy their foods more if they focus on combining the savory selections high in umami.

The nose contains millions of smell cells. These cells are hot-wired directly to the brain. Thus, they influence the tasting process a little more efficiently than the taste buds, which use three different nerves to get their messages to the brain. It is a fact that the 10,000 different odors that most people can detect are due more to the sense of smell than what is communicated by the taste buds alone.

Our diet is affected by how our taste buds respond to stimuli. Thus our craving for sweets and fats may be a result of our aversion to bitter flavors. Scientists may be able to determine in the future that there is a link between poor eating habits in some people and how their taste buds work.

Regardless of what our tongues may want, it is important to vary our diet with new flavors in order to keep both the sense of taste and smell finely tuned. Experimenting with new spices and herbs, like working out for your body or doing puzzles for your brain, can be considered good exercise for the often taken-for-granted senses of smell and taste.

Copyright 2011 by Linda K. Murdock. Linda Murdock is the best-selling author of A Busy Cook's Guide to Spices, How to Introduce New Flavors to Everyday Meals. Unlike most spice books, you can turn to a food, whether meat, vegetable or starch, and find a list of spices that go well with that food. Recipes are also included. To learn more go to http://bellwetherbooks.com

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