The Truth Is Out There: Mind-Blowing Facts About Taste

Most people know these two facts:

1. There are four or five different tastes (depending on how you like to count): bitter, sweet, sour, salty, and umami.
2. Your tongue tastes different flavors in different areas. For example, the tip of your tongue tastes sweet things.

Well, get ready for this: Both these "universal truths" are WRONG.

The more intellectual foodies may have discovered the real truths buried in food-science literature in the last few years. But, it's hardly hit the mainstream.

Enter "The Corrections," an article in the July 2008 issue of Gourmet.

Read it, and get ready to have your mind blown. Here are a few quotes from the article, to get you started:

"That’s just hokum... You can taste everything everywhere."

"There are no basic tastes... The notion was arbitrary, made up by a chap named Hans Henning in 1916."

"What’s important is that you taste something differently than I do. It’s like you’re living in a pink world, and I’m living in a blue world, and we’re talking about the color of the ocean. We’ll never agree."

"In the future, each of us will likely be able to identify our genetic predispositions to food. We might even have a food type, just as we have a blood type: I’m broccoli positive, you’re pumpernickel negative."

Discuss.

--KitchenMaus

Comments

[Cheeze on July 17, 2008 at 04:41 PM]

"That’s just hokum... You can taste everything everywhere."

Anyone who has ever drank Campari not knows this is BS.

[Cheeze on July 17, 2008 at 04:43 PM]

Err, that should read "...drank Campari knows this is BS."