Why Did We Evolve to Taste Sour Flavors?
Scientists don't know why we evolved to taste sour foods, but they recently figured out the mystery behind how we taste them. It's pretty crazy. You Think You Know What Meat Is... But...
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When you eat something sour, your tongue is actually tasting protons! YES I’m positive! Hang with me though, cuz, it gets weirder. First, to understand all this sour-y strangeness, we have to understand how the tongue tastes things to begin with, and just saying ‘taste buds’ ain’t gonna cut it. Those little bumps on your tongue are called papillae, and located in the crevices of each papilla are your taste buds. Each of those taste buds contains clusters of sensory cells, and when a compound from your food comes in contact with them, it causes a chain reaction in nearby nerve cells, bringing the message all the way back to the brain. There, the message combines with the messages from your nose to create what we experience as taste. But with sour tastes,...
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When you eat something sour, your tongue is actually tasting protons! YES I’m positive! Hang with me though, cuz, it gets weirder. First, to understand all this sour-y strangeness, we have to understand how the tongue tastes things to begin with, and just saying ‘taste buds’ ain’t gonna cut it. Those little bumps on your tongue are called papillae, and located in the crevices of each papilla are your taste buds. Each of those taste buds contains clusters of sensory cells, and when a compound from your food comes in contact with them, it causes a chain reaction in nearby nerve cells, bringing the message all the way back to the brain. There, the message combines with the messages from your nose to create what we experience as taste. But with sour tastes,...
