Month: September 2022

"TASTE is in charge of evaluating the nutritious content of food and preventing the ingestion of toxic substances. Sweet taste permits the identification of energy-rich nutrients, umami allows the recognition of amino acids, salt taste ensures the proper dietary electrolyte balance, and sour and bitter warn against the intake of potentially noxious and/or poison- ous chemicals." https://lnkd.in/eh5--gC View in LinkedIn

TASTE HAS BEEN HIJACKED at the expense of nutrition in our modern world. "There is a growing interest in developing novel taste stimuli and taste modifiers for humans and other animals." Cooking media almost exclusively focuses on taste, and rarely mentions nutrition. We are in an era of immense disconnect between the two. https://lnkd.in/epb6AAV View in LinkedIn

BIOLOGICAL CONUNDRUM. "Foods are consumed as macromolecules (e.g., proteins, starches and triglycerides) not isolated components. However, the gustatory system is configured to respond to single units and breakdown products such as amino acids, free fatty acids, and mono- and di-glycerides." https://lnkd.in/e6J_idS View in LinkedIn

VARIABLE HUMAN TASTES. "Taste perception varies considerably. In the simplest case, a single concentration of a single compound at be given to 100 random individuals and their responses to the test so,union will vary everywhere from "it tastes like water" to "it is intolerably strong" and a continuum of responses in between." https://lnkd.in/e-Wmu4Y View in LinkedIn

"A SINGLE TASTE BUD is composed of four different types of cells, and each taste bud has at least 30 to 80 cells. Each taste bud contains receptor cells. Afferent nerves make contact with the receptor cells at the base of the taste bud. A single taste bud is innervated by several afferent nerves, while a single efferent fiber innervates several taste buds. In humans, the sense of taste is conveyed via three of the twelve cranial nerves." https://lnkd.in/egDzbYx View in LinkedIn

"A single taste bud is composed of four different types of cells, and each taste bud has at least 30 to 80 cells. Each taste bud contains receptor cells. Afferent nerves make contact with the receptor cells at the base of the taste bud. A single taste bud is innervated by several afferent nerves, while a single efferent fiber innervates several taste buds. In humans, the sense of taste is conveyed via three of the twelve cranial nerves." https://lnkd.in/egDzbYx View in LinkedIn

"FIVE BASIC TASTES are recognized today: salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami. Salty and sour taste sensations are both detected through ion channels. Sweet and bitter and umami, however, are detected by way of G protein-coupled taste receptors." Taste modifiers exist, including miraculin and curculin for sweet and sterubin for bitter masking. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste_receptor View in LinkedIn

GROWING LIST. "Researchers have proposed new receptor cells on the tongue for detecting calcium, water and carbonation. The growing list of putative tastes now includes soapiness, lysine, electric, alkaline, hydroxide, and metallic." And fattiness. Taste sciences has "made more progress in the last 15 years than the last 100." http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/a-budding-club-of-tastes/?_r=0 View in LinkedIn

TASTE RECEPTOR REVIEW (2007). "Along with taste sensations, food usually simultaneously evokes other sensations, e.g., odor, touch, temperature, and irritation. Although it is not always easy to separate all these sensations perceptually, the nongustatory components are sensed by different systems, olfaction and somatosensation." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2721271/ View in LinkedIn

TASTE AS THE MOST INTREPID SENSE. "Diverse sensory inputs tickle taste buds...taste is often confused with flavor, the combined sensory experience of olefaction and gustation...(but) their signals are integrated (in the brain) to generate favors and mediate food recognition." https://lnkd.in/edXs5uh View in LinkedIn