Facts You May Find Interesting About Your Taste Buds
Posted on 8/9/2021 by Brandon Cooley
There's a lot to learn and know about our mouths. Some of the most interesting parts of it come from the most unexpected places. When we think of taste buds, we usually think of the surface of our tongues. We also think about how they help us… well, taste. But there Is more to them than those two parts. Here are some interesting facts about your taste buds.
Brain, Nose, and Memory
One of the most interesting parts of our taste buds is that we don't actually experience taste with them. They use a combination of sensations to give the experience of flavor, but in reality, that flavor-taste is happening as a reaction within our brains. To add to this, part of the reason we can taste is because of the sensory information given to us by our noses. Our sense of smell makes up a significant portion of our taste experience, in combination with our brain.
The brain and the nose are then responsible for helping us to remember things while eating food we've had before. Our brains recall the information from the last time we had it, and we 'remember' the last time we ate that food. This doesn't happen when something significant inside of the recipe is changed, as that changes the way the food smells—thus changing the taste, too.
Supertasters and Genetics
Every person has between 2,000 to 10,000 taste buds in their mouth. Not just the ones on the tongue, but also the ones on the roof and sides of the mouth and in the throat. So, some people with a higher amount of taste buds are more sensitive to particular foods, resulting in an intense love or dislike for them. These people are the supertasters of the world, and they commonly become chefs (or picky eaters).
There are a lot of genetic things that happen within your mouth, too. Things like the dislike of cilantro because it tastes like soap, for example. Taste differences like this have roots back hundreds of generations, back to when our ancestors needed to be able to taste poisonous plants from edible plants. This is also why people with fewer taste buds can have a strong reaction to particular tastes; their genetics react to the flavor inside their brain. To find out more about your mouth, contact us today. We would love to share what we know about your mouth with you!
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