Take a minute. Think about the most disgusting food you've ever eaten. Imagine it. What does it smell like? What does it feel like in your mouth? Does it have texture to it? Now, let's get away from the gross stuff and think about the other side of flavor. Think about the most delicious, amazing food you've ever eaten. Imagine it in your mind. What does it smell like? What does it feel like in your mouth and taste like? Is it tied to a good memory? Is it sweet? Is it salty? For me, the most delicious food I've ever eaten is a homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade sourdough bread. It was brought to my family when my husband was very sick and had just gotten out of the hospital. Even thinking about it now makes me sentimental and salivate. I'm Mimi Fatz, and this is the taste episode of Hello from the Van. Today we're talking about taste, what it is, how the human body processes taste, the senses and memories involved, and the process and science of food. To begin, what is taste? Taste is a sensation that our bodies experience when receptors along our tongue send signals to our brains about what we are eating. Your mouth is actually the first part of your digestive system and a critical part at that. If our body didn't send us signals to eat and that it wants to survive, we would shrivel up and pass away. Taste and saliva are critical parts of digestion and survival, but how do we taste? On your tongue are little bumps called papillae or papillae. If you look in the mirror, you can actually see them. Each of these bumps contains hundreds of taste buds. Food comes in contact with the taste buds and they then send a signal to your brain that is perceived as taste. There are five different types of taste: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami. Umami means savory or rich tasting. It's a Japanese word that we use to describe savory because Japanese scientists are the ones that named the sensation. The word, loosely translated, means deliciousness. But where do these flavors physically come from? The answer is molecules. It's science. Different molecules send different signals to our brains that our brains then process or perceive as different flavor. We perceive salt as pleasant because our bodies need it to survive. Most mammals perceive salt as pleasant because it's a requirement. Anyone who has seen a cow at a salt lick knows that to be true. This isn't an exhaustive list, there's some nuance, but sweetness is how our bodies perceive carbohydrates. Salty is how our body perceives sodium chloride. Sour is how our body perceives acids. And umami is how we perceive the amino acid L-glutamate. The short explanation for flavor is that it's a way for our brains to gather information about essential chemicals that we need for survival. All five of these basic tastes can be a warning or a craving, depending upon the effect the things they sense have on the body. For example, sweetness helps our body identify energy-rich carbohydrate foods, while bitterness can warn us of poison or foods that might be harmful to our bodies. But taste isn't a standalone sensation. We also have receptors in our mouth that help our brains process smell, texture, and temperature. Think back to that favorite food memory. Does imagining its smell, temperature, and texture enhance your memory? I'm betting it does. Because all of those receptors are connected in your mouth and they're connected to your memory. Before we go any further, we need to talk about one of my favorite parts of food science, thermodynamics. Temperature. The same area of science that helped discover Prince Rupert's drop, also affects your ability to taste different foods. Did you know that temperature greatly affects taste? It does. Those taste buds in your mouth are greatly affected by temperature, and so's your sense of smell. Temperature affects food flavor because your taste buds function best at lukewarm temperatures. If your tongue is between 59 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, that is when your taste buds are at their peak. Have you ever had a frozen popsicle or slushy on a very hot day? It melts in a cup and you think, mm, that's alright if it's melted. I'll still drink it. So you take a sip and it's disgusting. Nothing about the flavor profile changed. You can just taste more of it now that it's not frozen. The receptors on your tongue function within a range of temperatures. When a food is cold or frozen, it then requires extra flavor molecules to compensate for the cold. That's why melted popsicle at room temperature doesn't taste great. Your taste buds are working at their peak when it's melted, so the flavor is overwhelming. But frozen? You're only getting part of the flavor, so it tastes good. This is especially important when considering what drink to have with your food. As an icy cold beverage can feel good going down, but can greatly affect the flavor of your food. And it's not just the temperature of the food that matters, but also the temperature of your tongue. Having very hot or very cold drinks with your food decreases the intensity of sweet, bitter, and umami flavors. Whereas if you drink room temperature or lukewarm liquids, this will amplify the sweet, bitter, and umami flavors of your food. Thermodynamics and flavor go hand in hand and are a really fun and easy thing to experiment with as a family. You can get as controlled in this experiment as you want, break out that scientific method, have charts, graphs, the whole nine yards, or you can just try it for fun. Either way, here's what you're going to do: get a food that you enjoy. Try something simple, maybe an apple or a fruit or vegetable. Then get ice cold water or just an ice cube. Try your food at room temperature. So a bite of a room temperature apple. Note the flavor, taste, feel, all of that in your mouth. Then you can either drink ice cold water or put an ice cube on your tongue for a few seconds. Try another bite of that room temperature apple. How did it change? Did the flavor change? You can go on to try this with a host of different flavors and temperatures of water. It's actually really fun. It's also really interesting to see how our perception of flavor changes, even though the food doesn't. And speaking of flavor, why do we all prefer different foods? Well, because taste quite literally change. Did you know that taste buds and our ability to taste change through our lives? Babies and small children have a lot of fresh taste receptors on their tongues and perceive taste more intensely than their parents. As we age, our taste buds physically shrink and start to deteriorate. So we lose parts of our ability to process flavor. Studies show that older folks first lose the ability to taste sweet and salty foods. This is made worse as they then start to lose their sense of smell, as smell is a huge part of taste. With this in mind, it's important to remember that foods you may have tried years ago can actually taste different as you get older. Don't be afraid to retry foods because you might like them now. I used to hate tomatoes, tomatillos, all that. I used to not like them at all. Now, that's a different story. I love a nice firm tomato on a slice of bread with some salt and pepper. I'm turning into my grandmother, apparently. Now, when we talk about flavor preference, we also need to talk about two more aspects of food. The first is genetics. The second is engineering genetics. The same thing that give you red hair or melanated skin can also affect your sense of taste. At the FOTS house, one of our family members hates cilantro. I personally love cilantro. We discovered through some genetic testing that this particular family member who hates cilantro actually has a gene mutation called OR6A2 that makes cilantro taste like soap. Here I was putting cilantro on anything and everything and couldn't figure out why the food wasn't getting eaten. Come to find out, it was genetics, not my cooking. I count that as an absolute win. I don't have the OR6A2 gene mutation, so cilantro tastes great to me. I thought the meals I was cooking were delicious. But to this family member, I was basically trying to poison them. And the more we learn about genetics, the more we learn about how some populations process flavor. For example, there's a gene mutation called TAS2R38. It makes vegetables very, very bitter, almost to the point of unpalatable for those who have it. There's another gene mutation that makes it harder to perceive sweet-tasting things, and yet another gene mutation that makes savory foods extra delicious and intense. In short, sometimes it's not just that someone doesn't want to eat something, it can actually be that their body is simply not built to enjoy that flavor. Human beings are incredible. The final part of flavor that we need to talk about is food science, specifically food engineering. There are food engineers and food scientists out there who are responsible for the color, taste, texture, and what's called mouthfeel of processed foods. Their job is to make food as delicious and amazing as possible. Let's take one very simple example: the humble potato chip. Consumers spend over $64 billion on potato chips each year. It's a huge industry. So not only is there competition, there's a lot at stake. So manufacturers put a lot of time, energy, and money into researching how to get consumers like you and I to purchase their specific brand of potato chip. One way that they do this is through food scientists and food engineers. For these folks, their job is to get you addicted to the chip. Everything about the unassuming potato chip, from its package, its smell, and even its crunch, is designed to make you want more of them. There have even been studies about what is the optimal amount of crunch for a potato chip to spark the pleasure and reward center of your brain. Food scientists have actually even crossbred potatoes to create hybrid super potatoes that are perfect for only potato chips. They don't really taste good in any other capacity. They are only for potato chips. Scientists have cracked the code using those things we talked about before: texture, flavor, temperature, mouthfeel, to find the perfect ratio of salt, fat, and carbohydrates to hijack our brain's reward system. So now the same pleasure that we used to get from working hard and completing a difficult task, we can now get from just opening a bag and eating a chip. We then crave this reward, not because we love the flavor of the chip, but because we've become addicted to the physical reward of eating it. But why do I mention all of this food science and food engineering on a podcast for families? Especially on an episode around flavor and taste. Because this is a podcast where we learn new and important things. And today we are learning that flavor isn't just taste, but a highway of information, molecules, and chemicals communicating between our brains and our bodies. Taste isn't just what our taste buds do, it's a pathway to reward, energy, life, memories, and in some ways, happiness. Basically, if you know how your body functions the way that it does, how it tastes, why it tastes, what it tastes, you can make the best decisions for your own health and happiness. And with that, I'm Mimi Fots, and this has been another episode of Hello from the Van.