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Ever bitten into a hot pie, yelped “Hothothot!” then had your taste buds go on strike for the next week? Taste buds are a sensitive bunch.
Taste buds are clusters of tiny sensory cells. They detect the five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami.
The visible bumps on your tongue, called papillae, house between 2,000 and 10,000 taste buds.
Each taste bud is made up of 10–50 specialised taste receptor cells that regenerate every 10–14 days.
This ensures your sense of taste is always in top form. But how do we actually ‘taste’?
The flavour journey
Chewing and saliva break down the chemicals in food. These chemical messages are detected by taste receptors and transported to your brain.
The experience of taste is very much a team effort.
It involves smell receptors, texture sensing, temperature and mouth feel.
This is why a blocked nose dramatically dulls your sense of taste.
Credit: NEUROtiker/Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA-3.0
The bitter truth
It was once believed that different regions of the tongue detected specific tastes.
Now, research shows all tastes can be sensed across the tongue. Except bitter receptors – they’re particularly concentrated at the back of the tongue.
This heightened sensitivity likely evolved as a defence against ingesting something that might kill you.
Not what they used to be
Our sense of taste evolves over time. Taste is most intense in childhood.
We’re born with around 10,000 taste buds, which is why kids often find bold or bitter foods overwhelming. If you hated olives when you were younger but now can’t get enough of them, you’re not alone.
As we get older, our taste buds become less sensitive and die off, making strong or bitter flavours more enjoyable.
But it’s not just age that changes how we taste. Medication, illness, stress, diabetes and hormonal changes, including pregnancy, can all mess with your sense of taste.
Burnt tongues and broken buds
While uncomfortable, burning your tongue won’t permanently damage your taste buds.
Credit: Vladimir Floyd/Getty Images
However, chronic factors such as smoking, drug use, poor oral hygiene or infections can cause lasting impairment, permanently altering taste perception.
So the next time you’re too impatient to let your pie cool down, think about your taste buds and maybe blow on it.
