The Sixth Taste Sensation at the Tip of the Tongue

Scientists disagree about whether humans can detect more than five basic tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami). (Picture from: http://www.livescience.com/)

Since knowing the fire and start cooking plants, animals, or fungi as food, humans began to develop a culinary arts and creating various types of cuisine. Although humans have been adept at concocting all sorts of snacks, scientific understanding about how we felt the food was not yet ripe.

Greece or the ancient Chinese civilization has known the sensation of taste as a combination of various different perceptions. But Western food science, for example, has long been dominated by the four basic tastes, sweet, bitter, sour, and salty.

In recent decades, molecular biology and other modern scientific paradigm shaking. World of Western science, for example, now recognize the taste of umami or savory as a basic taste. Not only that, the concept of basic tastes that have been held for centuries now began to waver.

"There is no definition of basic tastes are widely accepted," says Michael Tordoff, a behavioral geneticist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. "The rules are changing rapidly."

Our ability to feel the five categories that have been recognized by the receptor was very determined in the bays of taste or taste bud on the surface of our tongue. Small sensory organs These cover almost the entire surface of the tongue, palate, back up the esophagus.

Touch sensation also plays an important role in experiencing a sense. The proof is a sensation that is felt when chewing nuts are crunchy than smooth peanut butter.

The smell should also be considered. The smell also influence our ability to detect flavors. The person often feels stuffy nose consumed food was bland.

Until now, scientists are constantly finding new receptors in our mouths. Taste receptor paves the way for the idea of ​​a new taste sensation reaches the brain. 

Next are the 7 new taste candidates proposed by the experts .*** [TJANDRA DEWI | LIVESCIENCE | KORAN TEMPO 3762]