Taste
Did you know?
♥ If you pinch your nose, you can’t tell one jelly bean from another—that’s because taste and smell are intricately linked. As saliva dissolves food, microscopic particles both settle on the tongue and waft up the back of the throat to the nose.
♥ A food scientist in New Jersey has developed a “bitter blocker,” a chemical that when added to food, prevents human taste buds from sensing bitter flavors, such as those in medicine and grapefruit. It will be in products sometime this year.
♥ Besides sweet, sour, salty and bitter, there are taste buds for umami, the savory taste of monosodium glutamate.
♥ It’s in the genes: A ferocious sweet tooth, sensitivity to sour tastes, or a reaction to bitter flavors may be genetically determined.
♥ Certain flavors are actually a touch-hot pepper irritates the inside of your mouth and you “taste” hot.
To Enrich Your Sense of Taste
♥ Eat foods high in zinc, such as eggs, oysters, nuts and seeds, or take a multivitamin that contains this mineral; Japanese researchers have found that zinc supplements can help patients with some kinds of taste disorders.
♥ Check your medications, some can alter your sense of taste. Some directly produce a bitter alter taste, but others are sneakier, change the taste of the blood that circulates in the tongue
