Month: September 2022

CHEMESTHESIS. The human tongue is "also sensitive to temperature, pressure, and chemicals that mimic both of these things, which turn up in a number of foods. This peculiar latter group of sensations is called chemesthesis, and you probably experience some flavour of it every day. One of the strangest examples is the Szechuan peppercorn, a staple of Asian cooking. You know when it's been sprinkled over a dish because suddenly your mouth begins to tingle gently, while going curiously numb." http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150120-hidden-ways-your-tongue-tastes View in LinkedIn

SANSHOOL. "Czechuan peppers contain hydroxy-alpha-sanshool that imparts desirable tingling, cooling, and numbing sensations (which) activates a subset of sensory dorsal root ganglion neurons." https://lnkd.in/eaCeKAW View in LinkedIn

TOUCH-TASTE OVERLAP. "It turns out that sanshool binds to channels in the membranes of neurons in the tongue that respond to touch, producing a kind of tactile mirage." http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150120-hidden-ways-your-tongue-tastes View in LinkedIn

PAIN-TASTE OVERLAP. "Another “non-taste” taste is the burning of capsaicin, the molecule that gives hot peppers their kick. Capsaicin binds to a receptor on cells that detect temperature and cells that send messages of pain. The same receptor and related ones are activated by piperine, a compound in black pepper that you might shake on your eggs in the morning, and allyl isothiocynanate, the burning compound in mustard and radishes." http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150120-hidden-ways-your-tongue-tastes View in LinkedIn

COLD-TASTE OVERLAP. "And on the other side of the spectrum, the chill of menthol in peppermint also arises from an odd coincidence. A receptor that triggers when the temperature in your mouth takes a dive is also set off when menthol is around." http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150120-hidden-ways-your-tongue-tastes View in LinkedIn

OLD VIEW. "So here's a question you don't hear every day: How many tastes can a person taste? There's sweet, of course. Then sour. Then salty. And when the Greek philosopher Democritus took up the question several thousand years ago, he added bitter. So that makes four." https://lnkd.in/eqJGRM2 View in LinkedIn

UMAMI, the universal fifth taste, imparted by glutamate, characterized by savory or delicious, was discovered only 100 years ago by Professor Kikunae Ikeda. It is found in soup stocks, meat dishes, aged cheeses, air-dried ham, shellfish, mushrooms, and ripe tomatoes. https://lnkd.in/eTt_MER View in LinkedIn

"GLUTAMATE is found in most living things, but when they die, when organic matter breaks down, the glutamate molecule breaks apart. This can happen on a stove when you cook meat, over time when you age a parmesan cheese, by fermentation as in soy sauce or under the sun as a tomato ripens. When glutamate becomes L-glutamate, that's when things get "delicious." " https://lnkd.in/eqJGRM2 View in LinkedIn

THE FIFTH TASTE. "L-glutamate, said Ikeda, is a fifth taste. When Escoffier created veal stock, he was concentrating umami. When Japanese made their dashi, they were doing the same thing. When you bite into an anchovy, they are "like glutamate speedballs. They are pure umami ... Aristotle was wrong. Plato was wrong. We have five tastes, not four." https://lnkd.in/eqJGRM2 View in LinkedIn

NEW TASTE ADOPTED. "Humans do have receptors for L-glutamate and when something is really, really yummy in a non-sweet, sour, bitter or salty way, that's what you're tasting. In 2002, this became the new view. It's in the textbooks now and scientists decided to call this "new" taste, in Ikeda's honor, "umami." https://lnkd.in/eqJGRM2 View in LinkedIn