Taste Synthesis Essay

Without any doubt, most essential needs a human has in order for survival is the need to eat and drink. With eating being such a crucial part of human survival, it doesn’t hurt to be able to eat foods or drink liquids that just so happen to taste “good”. In terms of taste, for the most part, nobody wants to intentionally eat foods that do not taste pleasurable. The better tasting the food, the more desirable it may be seen. Some of these foods even can help to give a person a better life. With eating being such a crucial part of survival, it is interesting to understand just how important it is and all the effects it has on the body. In order to understand how the sensation of taste works, the things that must be understood beforehand are how

In previous studies, Frank and Byram’s article suggest that taste and smell interactions are dependent on taste and odor. In their experiments, they gave subjects strawberry

“Phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) and its chemically related compound, 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP), provide extremely bitter taste to some subjects (tasters) but are tasteless or only slightly bitter to others (nontasters)” (Hong, et al.,711-15). There have been many experiments done to examine the relationship between PTC tasting and food preferences. “Although PTC itself has not been found in nature, the ability to taste PTC is correlated strongly with the ability to taste other naturally occurring bitter substances, many of which are toxic. Furthermore, variation in PTC taste sensitivity has been correlated with dietary preferences that may have significant health effects” (Wooding, et al., 637-646). Therefore, differences in PTC tasting can correspond with sensitivity to diseases that are related to diets in the human population. “The ability to taste the bitter compounds PTC and PROP was found to be a protective factor against cigarette smoking. On the other hand, PTC tasters may perceive vegetables such as cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts as unpleasantly bitter” (Floriano, et al., 931-941). Based on the information above one can conclude that PTC tasters are less susceptible to smoking cigarettes but they are also less likely to consume food that contain beneficial nutrients. A crucial point to understand is that although cruciferous

Now, in 2015, the number of searches and available information increased from ~334,000 hits to ~32, 200, 00 hits. The idea that food has similar addictive characteristics as drugs that affect the brain is quite controversial. People tend to eat when they are depressed, happy, emotional, celebrating and many other situations because food is easily accessed and not illegal. Research regarding sugar having addictive qualities was conducted in 2010 by the University of Texas and the Oregon Research Institute. Equipped with Haagen-Dazs ice cream and a group of overweight women, the researchers measured the brains reward center activity when shown images of ice cream and when tasting an ice cream milk shake; six months down the road, the group reconvened and the women once again tasted the ice cream. The results were that the woman who had gained weight over the time gap had decreased activity in the striatum, an area of the brain that registers reward, thus needing more to reach a feel good level of satisfaction (Langreth & Stanford, 2011). "The significance of this finding is that these are the same regions of the brain that light up in drug addicts who are show images of drug paraphernalia or drugs" (Wormer & Davis, 2013).

c. The research was led by the two experts mentioned earlier Jenny Tong and Matthias Tschöp. The article was “reprinted from materials provided by University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.” This study was done because it “could open up new avenues connecting metabolic control, chemo-sensation and behavioral neuroscience research.” The assumptions made about the audience reading this is that the audience should know about the ghrelin hormone, and how the sense of smell and hunger play a role in food. The agenda that is served by the article is to bring about the knowledge of how ghrelin is involved with our ability to locate and identify the foods.

It’s interesting to find out that the things we eat and drink are more so identified by our senses of sight and smell and not just taste. This is because food can be identified by just sight alone, and same thing goes for smell as well! Our brains actually view taste as a combination of the senses smell and touch at the same time. So really all sensory information is gathered from the actual substance we a consuming. The way we get this information through sent is located in the back of our mouths and called the “retronasal olfaction. The way we gather this similar same information through smell is located in the nose and called the “orthonasal olfaction”. These methods both influence the perception of flavor, so

Have you ever wondered why the things that taste bad to you may taste good to someone else? Why is that if we all have taste buds? The question is, are our taste buds the same, do our taste buds trigger the same taste. I have a theory that the replacement of our taste buds gives people different flavors in their mouths, such as something that's too sweet, sour, bitter, or salty to us may not be to others, because every two weeks or so, the taste buds that are coming into your mouth may not be in someone else's mouth.

When we taste something it is a process. Molecules enter the body in a solid or liquid form. They stimulate taste receptors on the tongue. There are five basic taste sensations: salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami. Umami is the latest addition. It is considered to be meaty, broth, or savory. Tasting begins with the tongue, which contains papillae. Papillae are divided into four areas:

There are complex molecular mechanisms involved in the sensation of taste, also known as gustation. They are specific to the five differing taste qualities. Taste transduction involves taste cells of varying structure and function. These taste cells comprise of type I glial like cells, type II receptor cells, and type III pre-synaptic cells. Through different mechanisms, the taste receptor cells detect a respective ligand of sweet, bitter, umami, sour, and salty tastes. It has been suggested that type I cells are involved in detection and transduction of salt through an ion channel. Type II cells operate through G-protein coupled receptors that belong to the T1R and T2R families. Neuron synapses and ion channels aide in the performance of type III cells. Gustatory receptors play an essential role in the detection and perception of tastes within the oral

I was asked by the Senses Challenge what two food combinations looked better than the other options. Though I only got these correct because the other choices did not look appealing, it turns out there is a scientific reasoning behind my choice. According to the explanation given by the test, the chemicals in food decide what flavors compliment others. Therefore if two foods share a chemical, such as the chemical amines in white chocolate and caviar, they will typically taste good together. Unless, of course, the person eating it is a supertaster. What surprised me most about these people is that they have more taste buds than the average person. Because of their excessive taste buds, it makes it difficult for them to eat bitter foods like espresso and olives.

Out of every cereal grain consumed around the world, wheat gluten contains the greatest amounts of glutamate at 25% by weight (7). Since K. Ikeda’s original experiments and T. Hayashi’s observations of glutamate’s ability to induce seizure activity upon direct application to the CNS, scientists have come a long way in the understanding of excito-toxins and their roles in food. Glutamate is largely responsible for wheat’s prodigious “umami” taste, coined by Ikeda in the early 1900s. Umami also gives substances such as MSG the unique ability to heighten and amplify taste, and is likely the reasoning behind wheat’s popularity and opiate-like activity in the brain. Elevated and recurrent dietary glutamate intake has been statistically shown to increase probability of developing neurodegenerative conditions like Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, epilepsy, migraines, and ADHD

Sensory adaption occurs when sensory receptors change their sensitivity to the stimulus. Sensory adaption takes place in all five senses. The Gustation system is the sensory system that I am going to focus on. While exploring the cross-adaption of the gustatory system also known as “Taste”. I dedcided to put together two different experiments to educate, and show you examples on how the sensory adaption connects with the sense of taste.

The sweet and savory “umami” taste receptor (the T1RI-TIR3 heterodimer) and the sweet taste receptor (the T1R2-TIR3 heterodimer) are sensed by g protein-coupled receptors called T1Rs. In certain vertebrates losses in taste receptors and perception are observed. The researchers set out to understand how hummingbirds can detect sugars since their nectar diets contain lots of sugars and their mechanisms of sugar perception began largely unknown. They started by identifying T1Rs for 10 different birds with different diets, and also cloned T1Rs from Anna’s hummingbird, chicken, and swifts’ (they are the hummingbird’s closest relative) oral tissue. T1R1 and T1R3 were successfully detected birds’ genome, except for the T1R2. Only non-avian species kept that receptor, which means that a different T1R2-indepenednt mechanism for sugar perception developed in avian species. To find these sweet receptors, they analyzed responses of bird taste receptors to sugars (carbohydrates), and amino acids. Hummingbirds with both the T1R1-T1R3 detected carbohydrates, sucralose, and sugar alcohols, but only when both were used in taste recognition. Weaker responses were observed with amino acids. The chicken or swift T1R1-T1R3 heterodimer failed to detect carbohydrates, but did detect amino acids.

As aforementioned, Taste Holdings Limited is a South African-based management group that owns and licenses a portfolio of diversified subsidiaries. Taste Holdings was established in 1996 with its founding entity Scooters Pizza opening its doors for the first time in South Africa in 2000. It was also in this year, March, the current Chief Executive Officer, Carlo Ferdinando Gonzaga was appointed.

When one thinks about eating a lemon, pursing of the lips, squinting of the eyes, and an extreme sour taste all come to mind. On the other hand, when thinking about eating a slice of chocolate cake, most people think about happy facial gestures as well as the sweet and satisfying taste. Why are some flavors preferred more than others? How and when do we develop these preferences? First, there are several different senses that play a role while eating. Gustatory (taste) senses, olfactory (smell) senses, and oral somatosensory stimulation (temperature, texture, etc.) all make up what we know as flavor. Gustatory senses include sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savory (also known as umami). While there are only a select few different tastes, there are hundreds of different scents that the nose can identify. In addition, how the food feels on the tongue plays a role in the perception of flavor. Although three separate components make up the perception of flavor, we perceive them all as a single unit. This explains why, for example, it is harder to taste food when we have a stuffy nose- we are unable to smell the food, and therefore the flavor perceived is not as prevalent. Our preference for flavors begins before we are even born. Humans have innate flavor preferences (such as sweet and savory) as well as preferences based on the food the mother consumes during pregnancy. After birth, infants also learn to prefer flavors through formula and breastfeeding, as well as repeated