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Authors: Barb Stuckey
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of bitter tastes.
Salt
Salt is the term we use to describe the taste of sodium ions. The most common form of salt is sodium chloride, which we add to food while cooking or sprinkle on at the table. Many foods naturally contain sodium, such as seafood and celery. Salt is critical to life, but we cannot store excess sodium in our bodies, so we are programmed to seek it out in the form of food. In modern times, getting just enough sodium in our diets—without excess—has proved to be a bigger challenge than getting too little. Regardless of how much sodium we consume, our craving for salt is natural—and critical to survival.
Umami
Umami is the most difficult taste to explain because the term is not commonly used outside the world of food or outside Japan, where the term originated. Umami is the taste of glutamates—amino acids that are present in some foods such as beef and mushrooms. The best-known umami-rich compound is glutamic acid—or glutamate—which occurs naturally in some foods such as mushrooms and seaweed. Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is the salt of glutamic acid and this form is often added to foods as a seasoning. We sometimes describe umami as tastingmeaty, savory, satisfying, or full. Think of the difference between raw ground beef—which has little umami—and a well-cooked hamburger, which has lots. Other savory foods that are high in umami are cooked tomatoes and the king of umami: aged Parmesan cheese.
The Geography of the Tongue
How do we actually taste these five Basic Tastes? One possibility is that different regions of the tongue process different tastes—as on this map, some version of which you almost certainly saw in elementary school.
The taste map of the tongue. Be careful how you interpret this!
The map shows the geography of the tongue and which area corresponds to which taste. People love this anatomical map because it makes some sense of the multitude of things you taste simultaneously in your mouth when you eat. There’s a major problem with it, though: it’s completely misleading. It seems to say that you can taste only one of the five Basic Tastes on one area of your tongue. This is not true. You can taste all five of the Basic Tastes on all parts of your tongue. Certain tastes will be more intense in certain areas, but that doesn’t mean you can’t detect these tastes elsewhere. Sour is really intense on the side of the tongue but you can taste sour everywhere. Prove it to yourself now by doing the Sour All Over Tasting exercise (at the end of the chapter): dip a cotton swab into distilled vinegar, a really tart liquid. Dab the swab around your mouth without swallowing. You should taste sour all over your mouth, not just on the sides of your tongue. That is, unless you have bald spots on your tongue or other damage to your taste nerves (as I do).
Breaking Down the Sense of Taste
Once you put food in your mouth, there are four dimensions of the sense of taste, according to Paul Breslin of Rutgers University and the Monell Chemical Senses Center. He calls the five Basic Tastes qualities. I like to think of the five Basic Tastes as the first question (Q) of taste, the What: What is it you’re tasting? Sweet? Sour? Bitter? The taste qualities of a tomato are sweet and sour.
The second taste dimension is intensity, or the degree of magnitude of a taste. I think of this as the How: How intense is the taste? How strong? How weak? Examples of this would be an extremely sweet tomato and a mildly sour one.
The third dimension he calls oral location , or the Where: Where in the mouth or throat is the taste perceived? Again, the best example of oral location is that most people detect sourness most strongly on the sides of the tongue. As you just learned, you can taste each of the five Basic Tastes everywhere. Where you perceive them to be the strongest is relevant but probably won’t affect your enjoyment of food.
The final dimension is the timing, or the When: When do you sense
Salt
Salt is the term we use to describe the taste of sodium ions. The most common form of salt is sodium chloride, which we add to food while cooking or sprinkle on at the table. Many foods naturally contain sodium, such as seafood and celery. Salt is critical to life, but we cannot store excess sodium in our bodies, so we are programmed to seek it out in the form of food. In modern times, getting just enough sodium in our diets—without excess—has proved to be a bigger challenge than getting too little. Regardless of how much sodium we consume, our craving for salt is natural—and critical to survival.
Umami
Umami is the most difficult taste to explain because the term is not commonly used outside the world of food or outside Japan, where the term originated. Umami is the taste of glutamates—amino acids that are present in some foods such as beef and mushrooms. The best-known umami-rich compound is glutamic acid—or glutamate—which occurs naturally in some foods such as mushrooms and seaweed. Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is the salt of glutamic acid and this form is often added to foods as a seasoning. We sometimes describe umami as tastingmeaty, savory, satisfying, or full. Think of the difference between raw ground beef—which has little umami—and a well-cooked hamburger, which has lots. Other savory foods that are high in umami are cooked tomatoes and the king of umami: aged Parmesan cheese.
The Geography of the Tongue
How do we actually taste these five Basic Tastes? One possibility is that different regions of the tongue process different tastes—as on this map, some version of which you almost certainly saw in elementary school.
The taste map of the tongue. Be careful how you interpret this!
The map shows the geography of the tongue and which area corresponds to which taste. People love this anatomical map because it makes some sense of the multitude of things you taste simultaneously in your mouth when you eat. There’s a major problem with it, though: it’s completely misleading. It seems to say that you can taste only one of the five Basic Tastes on one area of your tongue. This is not true. You can taste all five of the Basic Tastes on all parts of your tongue. Certain tastes will be more intense in certain areas, but that doesn’t mean you can’t detect these tastes elsewhere. Sour is really intense on the side of the tongue but you can taste sour everywhere. Prove it to yourself now by doing the Sour All Over Tasting exercise (at the end of the chapter): dip a cotton swab into distilled vinegar, a really tart liquid. Dab the swab around your mouth without swallowing. You should taste sour all over your mouth, not just on the sides of your tongue. That is, unless you have bald spots on your tongue or other damage to your taste nerves (as I do).
Breaking Down the Sense of Taste
Once you put food in your mouth, there are four dimensions of the sense of taste, according to Paul Breslin of Rutgers University and the Monell Chemical Senses Center. He calls the five Basic Tastes qualities. I like to think of the five Basic Tastes as the first question (Q) of taste, the What: What is it you’re tasting? Sweet? Sour? Bitter? The taste qualities of a tomato are sweet and sour.
The second taste dimension is intensity, or the degree of magnitude of a taste. I think of this as the How: How intense is the taste? How strong? How weak? Examples of this would be an extremely sweet tomato and a mildly sour one.
The third dimension he calls oral location , or the Where: Where in the mouth or throat is the taste perceived? Again, the best example of oral location is that most people detect sourness most strongly on the sides of the tongue. As you just learned, you can taste each of the five Basic Tastes everywhere. Where you perceive them to be the strongest is relevant but probably won’t affect your enjoyment of food.
The final dimension is the timing, or the When: When do you sense
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