All About Food: Sense of taste is more complex than you may think

We tend to think that our sense of taste is our sense of taste, but how we determine flavor depends on many factors.

Remember the old taste map of the tongue? It claimed that the back tastes bitterness, the back of the middle part of the tongue gets the sour, the front middle tongue tastes the salt and the tip tastes the sweet?

Well, it turns out that this was based on a misunderstood diagram in a 1901 paper. It took until 1974, when the subject was reinvestigated, to realize that each taste is on each part of the tongue.

Not only that, but in 2007, scientists discovered that cell linings in the small intestine also contain taste receptors. Sweet receptors line the bladder. Noses have the capacity to sense bitter. Your spine has sour receptors, and even the testes have the capacity to sense bitter tastes.

In 2013, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported the discovery that taste proteins for sweet and umami — the savory taste — not only exist in the testes but they play an important role in mouse fertility. More taste receptors were also found recently in the pancreas, stomach, lungs, intestine and brain. Researchers have not, however, figured out what they are there for.

Another taste factor is dependent on the ears. A study found that people who are eating where there is a lot of loud noise in the background rated food as less salty and less sweet than when it was quiet.

Up to 80% of what people think is taste is in fact related to smell. Hold your nose while tasting a jellybean. You can tell it’s sweet but not what flavor it is. Then unplug your nose and see what happens.

Potato chips taste crispier if you eat them while using headphones. White wine with a drop of red food coloring tastes like red wine even to experienced tasters. People will eat less food off a red plate. A block of cheese tastes sharper than one with round edges.

Did you know that food tastes different on an airplane than on the ground?

When you enter that plane your normal sense of taste stays behind. In fact, taste buds and a sense of smell are the first things to go. At 30,000 feet in the cabin, the lack of humidity leaves the air drier than most deserts. Mucus in the nose dries up and so the schnoz doesn’t work properly. Our perception of sweetness and saltiness drops inside a pressurized cabin. However, sour, bitter and spicy flavors are almost unaffected. Umami tastes may actually be enhanced by altitude.

Yet another interesting finding is that emotions can influence what you choose to eat. If you have ever gotten sick after eating something, you may never desire that thing again. If you loved your grandmother’s chicken soup, you might always remember her with fondness whenever you eat chicken soup.

The fact is that taste training begins in infanthood, with breast feeding — or even in the womb. Julie Mennella, who studies at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, says, “There isn’t a single flavor that doesn’t show up in utero.

“Not only is the amniotic fluid in humans flavored by food, but memories of these flavors are formed even before birth. That could result in preferences for these foods or odors for a lifetime. In other words, if you eat broccoli while you are pregnant, there is a much better chance that your baby will like broccoli.”

The subject of taste is a very complex and wondrous thing.

TERRY MARKOWITZ was in the gourmet food and catering business for 20 years. She can be reached for comments or questions at m_markowitz@cox.net.