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How is your tongue like an inkjet printer?
By Linda | April 11, 2008
Most inkjet printers use only four basic ink colors - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. The printer combines these colors to represent each image pixel in various colors, shades, and intensities. The image is dithered, meaning the printer uses a pattern of several of its dots to simulate the color of each pixel in the image.
Similarly, the human tongue is only able to perceive four different types of true tastes - sour, sweet, salt and bitter. Each of these types of receptors bind to a specific structure of a “taste” molecule. Sweet receptors recognize hydroxyl groups in sugars, sour receptors respond to acids, salt receptors react to the metal ions in salts and alkaloids trigger the bitter receptors. Some examples of alkaloids are nicotine, quinine, morphine and strychnine. Many poisons are alkaloids, and the location of receptors for the bitter taste at the back of the tongue may help to trigger the vomiting response, increasing the chances of survival should a poison be accidentally ingested.
All of the complex flavors we associate with food and drink are made of varying combinations and intensities of these four basic tastes. Just like the printed image from the inkjet printer is really only a combinations of those four colors.
Approximately 80-90% of what we perceive as “taste” actually is due to our sense of smell. Just think about how dull food tastes when you have a head cold or a stuffed up nose.
Before the food even touches your tongue you begin to taste it as you breathe in the aroma. As you begin to chew, some scent molecules volatilize and travel up to the olfactory organ through a “back door” - that is up a passage at the back of the throat and to the nose. Since we can only taste four different true “tastes”, it is actually smell that lets us experience the complex, mouth watering flavors we associate with our favorite foods.
Is your mouth watering to learn more about the human senses? To read all about eyesight CLICK HERE.
Topics: Food Science, Health & the Human Body, Technology |
May 4th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
[...] Vision isn’t the only sense that can alther your perception of the flavor of foods. To learn more, CLICK HERE. [...]