Patricia Miller, age 12, of Columbus ohio, for her question:
How do we get the taste of our food?
Tasting is done with the tongue and the nose. When we have a cold, food tastes flat. This is because the nose is swollen and unable to do a good smelling job. And to enjoy a full flavor we must be able to smell it as well as taste it with the tongue. A small odor from every mouthful comes in contact with the nose lining. There it touches sensitive nerve endings. They react and send messages to the brain:
The tongue tastes with the help of small bodies called taste buds. Each is buried in the skin and looks like a folded rose bud. Inside each taste bud there are several sensitive threads. These are nerve endings. They stretch in long, long lines to the brain. The top of each taste bud is a small pore connecting with the surface of the tongue.
To reach the taste buds, food must be dissolved. The flavor either comes in liquid form, or it must melt in the juices of the mouth. In this form it touches the sensitive nerves. These nerve endings can tell one flavor from another. They send their information along nerve trunk lines to the brain.
Maybe you thought your tongue could taste fifty or a hundred different flavors. This is not so. The taste buds can tell the difference between only four basic flavors. They can recognize sweet, sour, salt and bitter.
How then can we taste so many delicious flavors? The taste buds can send in a mixed report. A pickle is partly salt and partly sour. The nose adds a footnote to the report. The pickle has a vinegary flavor. The tongue and the teeth add more information. The pickle is cold and smooth. It is also juicy and firm. All this information is put together in jig time by the brain. After the first bite, you are enjoying all the sensations that the pickle has to offer.
The taste buds are limited to four selections. The nose can recognize a vast number of different smells. Together, the tongue and nose can report on an endless variety of different flavors. The tongue also includes the information as to whether the food is hot or cold, rough or smooth, hard or soft.
The sense of taste is for our pleasures. But it also has a purpose. The taste of good food makes the juices in the mouth flow freely. These juices start the food digesting. They make chewing easier by helping to mash up the food.
Maybe you suspected that the more delicious the foods, the sooner it disappears. This is true. For the better it tastes, the more juices flow into the mouth to melt it. Tasteless food leaves the mouth dry and makes swallowing difficult.
The nose may start the tasting process long before you eat. Smells from the kitchen reach it and it relays the good news to the brain. The mouth begins to water hopefully. But the taste buds cannot add their sweets sour, salt or bitter information until the first bite begins to melt.