How exactly do taste buds know what tastes like what (i.e. sweet, sour, etc.)?

Question

Why do sweets taste sweet? How can taste buds tell a lemon is sour? Why do some people adore to taste certain things while others can't stand them?

Answer 1

There is a phrase in Latin:"De gustibus non est disputandum"; in other words, "There is no accounting for taste...."

Seriously, though.....taste buds don't "know" anything. They are merely doing the job they were born to do; which is to sense specific substances in our food.

A single taste bud can only respond to one kind of "taste", buds for sweet, salty, sour, bitter,( and savory, or "unami") are roughly grouped in particular areas of the mouth.

"Sweet" taste buds are mainly intended to respond to "fructose" sugar; which is found in, you guessed it, fruits.

"Salty" taste buds respond strongly to sodium, potassium, and calcium ions, as may be stimulated weakly by a few other types of ions.

"Sour" buds respond to acidic substances. More specifically, sour taste buds are stimulated by the hydrogen ions (H+) found in all acids.

The sensation of "bitterness" is rather complex, and bitter taste buds are able to sense bitterness from a *wide variety* of different chemicals. Most scientists believe that the "bitter" taste evolved, as a way to protect us from eating poisonous plants.

In 1908 the Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda identified a fifth type of taste bud. This taste bud responds to "Glutamate", an essential amino acid found in a wide variety of foods, particularly meats and fermented products.

Ikeda named this taste "unami", which translates roughly as "savory." While this is not a new discovery, until recently most basic materials on the subject (at least those written in english) fail to mention unami at all......

Hope that makes sense.....
~W.O.M.B.A.T.

Answer 2

Sweets taste sweet because that is the way that our brain interprets the signals it receives from the sugar stimulated taste buds. Same applies to all the other areas of the tongue. The taste is an interpretation by the brain. Note also that taste is sensed by certain areas of the nasal passage from 'fumes' given off by food.

Answer 3

taste bud receptors and chemical structure. the current thought on tastes is that we taste salts, sweets, bitters, sours, "meats," and argueably fats. different chemical structures will illicit differenty "tastes."

tastes differ among animals...for example, dog (like us) have sweet receptors and so they see sweats (which is not necessarily a bad thing...but you know dogs and chocolate don't mix) while cats do not have these--and interestingly enough, carbohydrates are not a dietary essential for them...so no need to bother tasting them if you're not going to eat sugars...

the craving for certain tastes is a means by which your body to tells you what you're "lacking" (carbs, proteins, fats, ions....). and as to why certain people like the tastes they do...that has something to do with cultural background.

in obscure scientific speak:
the sensation of taste is initiated by the interaction of sapid molecules (tastants) with receptors and ion channels in the apical microvilli of taste receptor cells (TRCs). this phylogenetically primitive sense enables higher organisms to avoid toxins and find nutrients. Many taste transduction pathways convert chemical information into cellular second messenger codes utilizing cyclic nucleotides (cNMPs) or inositol trisphosphate (IP 3 ). these messengers are typically part of a signaling cascade that leads to TRC depolarization and Ca 2+ release. the vertebrate taste cell responds to a given tastant (signal transduction) and this information is processed in the periphery and encoded in the gustatory areas of the brain (sensory coding)

Answer 4

A complex question indeed. Our taste buds only detect two tastes, salt and sweet. A combination of those two is what makes us think things taste different.

Answer 5

http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/taste_buds.html
try this link.
i remember back in like..5th grade health they told us that your tongue is divided into sections. one section sweet, one section salty, one section sour, and one section bitter. i remember the bitter one is in the very back, which is why you basically have a gag reflex. because something tastes bad.
hope this helps [:

Answer 6

Because God made it that way, and it was gooooood.


Squid.