43
votes
Accepted
Are drugs made bitter artificially to prevent being mistaken for candy?
Short answer
A bittering agent may be applied to therapeuticals to prevent pediatric poisonings, but many drugs inherently taste bitter by themselves.
Background
Bitter taste is thought to have ...
- 52.6k
40
votes
Why do some vegetables taste bitter?
Nice question! Many vegetables taste bitter because they contain compounds known as phytonutrients (Greek phyto = "plant"). There are more than 2500 phytonutrients known, and the most important (and ...
- 14.1k
37
votes
Do viruses or bacteria have a flavour?
So I think this is a more conversational kind of question. I will address some misconceptions you have, and I will try to keep it brief, considering the nature and depth of your question. One could ...
- 6,272
36
votes
Accepted
Do viruses or bacteria have a flavour?
As you could imagine, a systematic cataloguing of bacterial or viral flavor profiles would violate a number of biosafety protocols. However, in a laboratory setting, different bacteria definitely have ...
- 4,787
28
votes
Accepted
Loss of taste and smell during a SARS-CoV-2 infection
This is not completely clear to say the least, but there are some hints. Please keep in mind that there was not much time for extensive research, since this disease is still quite new. What seems ...
- 52.5k
16
votes
Accepted
Why do some vegetables taste bitter?
Bitter taste is sensed by bitter sensitive gustducin receptors (T2R family). There are different types of bitter receptors and they can be triggered by different kinds of ligands. Different classses ...
- 35.6k
9
votes
What makes cherry blossoms so delicious? Does this delicious molecule (or molecules) have some function in the blossom? Does saliva activate it?
There actually is a study in the Nature magazine identifying the volatile (in the sense that they easily evaporate, as most aromatic substances do) organic compounds in cherry flower essential oils (...
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6
votes
Do viruses or bacteria have a flavour?
Already 2 good answers (MikeyC and S PRr), but one point missing:
We are very good at detecting the presence of some bacteria and fungi in our food in unhealty amount. We detect (by smell or taste) ...
- 277
6
votes
Accepted
Is chocolate poisonous?
Alkaloid synthesis is energy consuming for plants and have complex metabolic pathway.
If their evolutionary history is not known with certainty, they have numerous uses and are often toxic to ...
- 191
4
votes
Additive property of taste
I would classify the neurological phenomenon of "taste" or "tastyness" as an emergent property (1), and therefore synergistic (i.e. not adequately explained simply by additive effects). For example, ...
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4
votes
Why there are no plants that offer salt fruits as opposed to sweet fruits?
Soil salinity and sodicity cause severe problems in agriculture worldwide, and salt tolerance in crops is an extremely important trait and a major focus of research. Detrimental effects of high ...
- 321
3
votes
Why and how does falsifying sensory information work?
These are learning phenomena you describe. I'll try to explain a simple way to think about this.
By default, sweet foods are appetitive and, for instance, strongly bitter foods are aversive. However, ...
- 6,272
3
votes
Why is your taste affected due to sinuses?
The first thing which is important to note is the difference between taste and flavor.
Taste refers to the chemical sense performed by taste buds present on the tongue, and to date there have been ...
- 631
3
votes
Accepted
Tea that makes everything taste like dirt
This sounds like gymnemic acid, which can be isolated from the leaves of Gymnema sylvestre. It’s an “anti-sweet” compound, which wouldn’t necessarily make everything taste like dirt but might do so ...
- 808
2
votes
What does DNA taste like?
Youtube chemist NileRed chemically extracted DNA from strawberries in this video, he also tastes it if I remember correctly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=araeHtN_3Lk
TL;DW: He gets the DNA from ...
- 21
1
vote
Accepted
How do farmers tell if their fruits are sweet without eating them?
A relative of mine tells me that when she goes to buy fruits, she asks the vendor if the fruits are sweet. Surprisingly, the vendor is able to tell (the vendor is apparently willing to divulge this ...
- 3,862
1
vote
Additive property of taste
Long answer from a non-biologist.
I was dreaming about explaining coffee flavors as an n-dimensional space spanned by the discrete detectable flavors/aromas present in a cup. In this model, a single ...
- 19
1
vote
Why don't vegetables taste good despite being healthful?
We are evolved to survive starvation, and live to be perhaps 35. So fatty foods with lots of calories taste good to us. Our genes (and preferences) lag thousands of years behind our present ...
- 7,703
1
vote
Why do fishes have both a gustatory and an olfactory system?
In addition to olfactory and gustatory, fishes have two more chemoreceptor systems, solitary chemoreceptor cells and free nerve endings (Finger TE 1997). Asking why do they have all these chemorecepor ...
- 2,406
1
vote
Is bad tasting food more likely to cause harm?
tl;dr; If someone likes a food item, then even if it taste not so great to you, it will probably not harm you. If a food item taste awful to everybody (in particular bitter), then it would probably be ...
- 2,903
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