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Taste and How it Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Put us together, and you've got
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Speaker 1: the podcast duo. That's huge in Dallas. Yeah, you've got
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Speaker 1: a lot more than that. Yeah, that about four hundred
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Speaker 1: pounds of hairy goodness, slippery hairy goodness. Yeah, four hundred pounds,
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Speaker 1: and I'd say at least a hundred pounds of that
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Speaker 1: his hair. Yeah right. I wish if I could get
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Speaker 1: a haircut and would solve that problem in a shade.
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Speaker 1: You did get a haircut. We have the same haircut.
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Speaker 1: We're matching hair It's like, um, it's called the five guard. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: four guard? You go, is there a five? Yeah? I want?
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Speaker 1: I want, I go five, and I do a four
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Speaker 1: and then do a three on the sides. Just feather
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Speaker 1: it up. You know, it's weird this conversations. Yes, uh
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Speaker 1: Umi says that she can smell a new haircut. You
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Speaker 1: know how you can smell a freshly cut long? She
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Speaker 1: says she can smell a new haircut, and I'm like,
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Speaker 1: no one else on the planet. Can we even looked
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Speaker 1: it up. There's no reference on the entire internets to
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Speaker 1: smelling of a new haircut. Right, maybe she's a super
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Speaker 1: taster smeller. I was going to say, I don't think
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Speaker 1: that that translates to taste chuck. But is that a segue?
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Speaker 1: I think that works kind of right? I mean, um,
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Speaker 1: consider this. You know when you've ever smelled something and
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Speaker 1: you're like, I know what that would taste like, but
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Speaker 1: it wouldn't taste like that, But you just you can
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Speaker 1: tell how something would taste for how you would imagine
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Speaker 1: it would taste. The reason it's so easy to imagine
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Speaker 1: that is that smell and taste are as similar as
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Speaker 1: any two senses are because they're both reactions to chemicals. Right,
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Speaker 1: olfactories smell gustatory. We'll probably say those words taste very nice.
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Speaker 1: And the types of there, they're different types of molecules
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Speaker 1: that react to different types of UM senses. Right, So
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Speaker 1: you have an odorant that we smell that reacts with
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Speaker 1: our our odor receptors, and then you have goostants or
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Speaker 1: taste its. Yes, I prefer tasting um that react with
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Speaker 1: the taste receptors on our tongue, right, right, But because
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Speaker 1: they're so close, you know, you really actually can't have
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Speaker 1: one without the other. Which if you've ever had, um,
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Speaker 1: you know, any industrial accident associated with chlorine, you'll know
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Speaker 1: that not only can you not smell any longer, you
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Speaker 1: can't taste any longer. Yeah, or that's why the tastes
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Speaker 1: weird when you have a cold. Like Patty and Selma,
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Speaker 1: they had an accident. I can't remember what happened, but
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Speaker 1: they everything tastes like cardboard to them. It was like
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Speaker 1: this offhanded thing they said in the Simpsons, but like
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Speaker 1: after it sunk in, I'm like, that's the most depressing
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Speaker 1: thing I've ever heard. They were big smokers too. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I guess that was my Patty and Selma. Uh, since
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Speaker 1: you mentioned it, we should go ahead and point a
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Speaker 1: little factoid here that worms and other invertebrates actually there's
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Speaker 1: no distinction between taste and smell. Yeah. They're like, why
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Speaker 1: why put any kind of division up. We're just gonna
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Speaker 1: call all one thing. But my head looks like my butt,
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Speaker 1: so what's the difference, right? They distinguished between volatile and
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Speaker 1: non volatile organic compounds, right, which means that if you
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Speaker 1: paint a room and put a worm in it, it
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Speaker 1: knows that you just painted that room, right, or if
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Speaker 1: you got your hair cut right perhaps, Yeah, uh so,
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Speaker 1: I guess we should talk about these uh g r
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Speaker 1: c s, gustatory receptor cells, taste buds. That's kind of
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Speaker 1: where it all happens, it is, and you know, the
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Speaker 1: taste buds are a little Oh, I guess they're part
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Speaker 1: of the little bumps on your tongue. But yeah, it's
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Speaker 1: actually under that. Yeah, well how that works. It's wrapped
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Speaker 1: up in a package, right. Yeah. It looks like a
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Speaker 1: little spring onion, like the butt of a spring onion,
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Speaker 1: or radish looks like a radish it does, or beat
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Speaker 1: It looks like one of those maybe even a weird
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Speaker 1: gar like or you know what it looks like here
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Speaker 1: looks like a hot air balloon. It looks like one
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Speaker 1: of those boxing Yes, nice, chuck um. Within this little
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Speaker 1: what's called papilla papilla Yeah, um, I don't think you're
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Speaker 1: supposed to say it like that. Within that, there's fifty
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Speaker 1: taste receptors and they're generally specialized taste receptors, right, and
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Speaker 1: they're gonna be the same kind of taste receptor in
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Speaker 1: every peppie, right, um. And so you've got fifty of
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Speaker 1: those some basil cells which are skin cells. They produced
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Speaker 1: skin cells, right, Yeah, not basil is in the plant.
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Speaker 1: That would be great. If they had basil that lived
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Speaker 1: in my tongue at all time, you would be turned one.
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Speaker 1: Remember that's right. It's as for men, yes, just for
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Speaker 1: men gel Um. Great if you're actually sponsored by things
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Speaker 1: and we just worked them in like that. Yeah, it's
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Speaker 1: called product place, right, what do we do on that? Um?
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Speaker 1: So you have about fifty receptors in this little peppie
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Speaker 1: lace and basil cells, and um, you have a little
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Speaker 1: each each receptor cell has a little hair sticking out
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Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, gustatory hair. Right. It's not Italian though now,
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Speaker 1: but all of it does sound in town. That's from
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Speaker 1: what I gather from this photo rendition, is that that
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Speaker 1: is what you actually see poking up on your tongue. Right.
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Speaker 1: The little round thing is actually the little goostatory hairs,
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Speaker 1: isn't it. That's what it looks like. It's coming out
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Speaker 1: of the top of the speed bag, and they come
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Speaker 1: out of taste pores. And it's the goose story hair
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Speaker 1: where all the actions taking place. Right, Yeah, that's where
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Speaker 1: flavor and take well this or taste starts. Say you
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Speaker 1: put a bite of steak in your mouth, right, so
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Speaker 1: the the um, the saliva is breaking down the meat.
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Speaker 1: It's the first step in breaking it down, and it's
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Speaker 1: breaking it into these little molecules called tasteins or gustin, yes,
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Speaker 1: depending on your preference and um. These molecules bind to
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Speaker 1: the saliva, are taken across the tongue, and they stick
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Speaker 1: to the receptors that are generally uh designed to if
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Speaker 1: you believe in intelligent design, designed to um create the
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Speaker 1: sensation that we call taste, or they just happened to
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Speaker 1: match up. If you don't believe in intelligence, right exactly,
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Speaker 1: good luck. And Chucker's taste is much different from flavor,
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Speaker 1: isn't it. Let's define taste and flavor because this is
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Speaker 1: a big This is a big thing. Yeah, flavor. I
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Speaker 1: think Sarah Dowdy actually have stuff you missed in history class.
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Speaker 1: Fine podcasts. She wrote this and the way she put it,
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Speaker 1: which I thought was great, was flavor is it's sort
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Speaker 1: of like a full body. And we'll get into actually
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Speaker 1: that stuff later with the gut cells. But flavor is
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Speaker 1: a whole body experience. It's um, all your senses, including smell,
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Speaker 1: obviously tactile, and she said that with spicy food, pain
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Speaker 1: is factored in. Is one of the aspects of flavor. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I love that. So taste is this this taste in
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Speaker 1: molecule wrapped up in your saliva, smacking against augustatory hair. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's it sends a transmission to your brain, right, and
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Speaker 1: your brain encodes it and says mommy right. Or salty.
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Speaker 1: There's different voices for each taste, as I'm sure you
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Speaker 1: know already. Um, don't ask me to do sour, but
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Speaker 1: that's just the we will later. That's just the taste.
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Speaker 1: The flavor is that the pressure that the steak puts
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Speaker 1: on your tongue, um, the the the TecTile sensation of
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Speaker 1: you know, the kind of ends of the meat. You
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Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, it's just kind of dancing across
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Speaker 1: your tongue or if you like your steak rare, medium rare,
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Speaker 1: like I do that, just that lump of like warmish,
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Speaker 1: bloody flesh, right, yeah, And then like you said, pain
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Speaker 1: to all of our vegetarian fans, just turned off. Just
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Speaker 1: are so disgusted right now. But that whole sensation is flavoring.
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Speaker 1: All these different sensations are going to the brain, and
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Speaker 1: the brains like steak. Yeah, you know what I want
7:54
Speaker 1: to know. And actually just thought of this. What is
7:56
Speaker 1: the deal when you like, eat a piece of cheese.
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Speaker 1: Someone will tell me that, I'm sure like you get
8:01
Speaker 1: a piece of sharp cheddar and it feels like your
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Speaker 1: jaw locks up. Do you ever have that with certain flavors? No, really,
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Speaker 1: your jaw lot, I know, with like really dill sour flavor.
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Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I'm talking about Jerry, have you ever
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Speaker 1: had that cheese? Jerry's asleep, Like, I'll put a piece
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Speaker 1: of cheddar in my mouth and my my jaw just
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Speaker 1: like clinches, like noticeably clinches. I have no idea what
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Speaker 1: you're talking about. Jerry just said, yes, Jerry doesn't know
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Speaker 1: what we're talking about at all. Well that maybe you know.
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Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about super tasters in a minute. There
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Speaker 1: are different types of tasters. We found out it's not
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Speaker 1: the same for everyone, So maybe that's one of my
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Speaker 1: you know, my kinds, right, And here's a little spoiler
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Speaker 1: about super tasters. The key to supertasters. They have more
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Speaker 1: taste buds. It's huge boring alright, so chuck, um, there are,
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Speaker 1: of course, what every school kid knows, our primary tastes, right, yeah, sweet, salty, sour, bitter.
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Speaker 1: Right back in our day, that was it. That's all
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Speaker 1: the taste you'd get, right, sunny, yeah, and um what
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Speaker 1: was it? Salt, sweet, sour, bitter? Yeah, right, and then um,
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Speaker 1: what's funny? In the Western world, For a good century
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Speaker 1: after a fifth taste was discovered, we still stuck to
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Speaker 1: these four and didn't recognize that there was a fifth
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Speaker 1: one Americans because the researcher was Japanese and his work
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Speaker 1: was never translated to English. So in about nineteen d
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Speaker 1: nineteen o one, um a Japanese researcher named kikun Ikeda Yeah,
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Speaker 1: thank you aka Akita Akeda. Yeah. In the early nineteen
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Speaker 1: hundreds he discovered um something called umami, which means a
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Speaker 1: delicious savory taste in Japanese, right right. What he was
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Speaker 1: doing was he was he was cooking some of that
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Speaker 1: Japanese seaweed that we both love, and he was like,
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Speaker 1: you know what, this is neither sweet, salty, bitter or
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Speaker 1: so or so he started researching it, and he found
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Speaker 1: out that he isolated the glutamic acid and found out
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Speaker 1: that it had his own good statory receptor. So he
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Speaker 1: was like, this is legit, and he said it in
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Speaker 1: Japanese is the problem, right, yeah, And everybody was like,
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Speaker 1: what that guy just say, mommy, let's go back to
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Speaker 1: the World's Fair in St. Louis right, that's my scream. Um.
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Speaker 1: So one of the reasons also that it was never
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Speaker 1: really investigated over here is ou mommy is much more
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Speaker 1: of a flavor that is in Japanese dishes, like you said,
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Speaker 1: seaweed huge, but also over here we have tomatoes and
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Speaker 1: new mommy flavor meat meat savory, sure, right um. And
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Speaker 1: uh Kada's research was backed up in the West in
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Speaker 1: nineteen five later, yeah, when some researchers started to try
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Speaker 1: to isolate the taste for monosodium glutamate. And remember oummi
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Speaker 1: is uh glutamic acid, right, yes, so glutamate glutamic acid.
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Speaker 1: So they're trying to isolate the flavor of MSG, which
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Speaker 1: is a pretty distinct savory flavor, and they found that
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Speaker 1: no combination of the primary taste bitter sweet, salty sour
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Speaker 1: could replicate MSG. I wonder how they did that. I
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Speaker 1: don't know. There's a lot going on in flavor science
11:17
Speaker 1: that it is fascinating huge, yes, but it's yeah, I'm curious,
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Speaker 1: but they basically yeah, you're right, they came away with nothing.
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Speaker 1: All the combinations. They can't account for MSG and it's
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Speaker 1: magical properties a flavor and calories and uh, it's supposed
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Speaker 1: to like make you feel full or something, you know
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Speaker 1: what they say. I don't know with MSG. Yeah, I
11:37
Speaker 1: thought that was the deal with or maybe that was
11:39
Speaker 1: just an urban legend people like, you know, Chinese food.
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Speaker 1: MSG makes you feel awful. No, it makes you feel sick.
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Speaker 1: It's called Chinese restaurant syndrome. That's Chinese restaurant syndrome. I
11:48
Speaker 1: know with me if I eat MSG, Um, it's uh
11:51
Speaker 1: it feels like a clause grabbing the top of my
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Speaker 1: stomach hurt so bad. Um, yeah, it's it's a lot
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Speaker 1: of people are allergic to MSG. And of course Chinese
12:00
Speaker 1: restaurants were famous for they I don't think so, and
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Speaker 1: most most restaurants actually advertised whether or not use it. Well,
12:07
Speaker 1: they advertise that they don't use that. They don't advertise
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Speaker 1: like with MSG is a bad thing. Sure, but remember
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Speaker 1: we got a listener mail in once from somebody whose
12:16
Speaker 1: family owned a bunch of Chinese restaurants and was like,
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Speaker 1: you guys talk about Chinese restaurants center and because MSG
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Speaker 1: is found in like snack chips or you know, and
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Speaker 1: we get all the blame right, and it's just it's
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Speaker 1: not just Chinese restaurants, and a lot of Chinese restaurants
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Speaker 1: have stopped using MSG. So there you go, listener. We
12:33
Speaker 1: satisfied that two year old listener mail just we finally
12:35
Speaker 1: get around to it. And did you hear what a
12:37
Speaker 1: pro I was. I didn't cite the snack chip that
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Speaker 1: he used as an example. That's how good we're getting. Wow. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: my mind is blown right now too. So UM, like
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Speaker 1: you said in two thousand two, actually is when Akita's
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Speaker 1: study was finally translated into English. So many years even
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Speaker 1: after oh so from that point New Mommi um was
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Speaker 1: accepted as an as the official fifth taste and then
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Speaker 1: but think about it, so that's like a century because
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Speaker 1: the taste map, which we'll talk about the tongue map,
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Speaker 1: that was established in nineteen one about the time that
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Speaker 1: Kata was coming up with the umami. But it was
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Speaker 1: this that sweet, sour, salty, bitter right. Um, So for
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Speaker 1: a century the taste map didn't change, and then in
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Speaker 1: two thousand two, U mom is accepted in the West finally, right,
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Speaker 1: and then it seems like the floodgates open, right all
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Speaker 1: of a sudden, like they're like, well, wait a minute,
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Speaker 1: if there's a fifth taste, maybe we haven't been paying
13:37
Speaker 1: enough attention. Like fat is apparently now the sixth primary taste, right,
13:42
Speaker 1: leave it to the French. Um. There are new studies
13:44
Speaker 1: now Joshure's that says that, well, they they think they've
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Speaker 1: identified fat as its own thing, like humans have a
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Speaker 1: taste for fat, and that the funny thing I thought,
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Speaker 1: if you have a high sensitivity to that taste, you
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Speaker 1: eat less fatty foods. You know, chuck. That is I think, Um, really,
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Speaker 1: that's something that's going to become what gets taste research.
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Speaker 1: It's funding is obesity and diabetes and stuff, because what
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Speaker 1: they found is people who are when you're talking about
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Speaker 1: super tasters, supertasters who taste sweet things, tend to eat
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Speaker 1: less um tasters who a lot of people don't really
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Speaker 1: detect the fat as much people who do have less
14:23
Speaker 1: body fat. You said, the lower body mass index. Yeah. Um,
14:26
Speaker 1: so you don't eat the foods that you taste the most. Yeah,
14:30
Speaker 1: that's interesting, it's very interesting. Yeah, they did. The lady
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Speaker 1: did the one study on supertasters, and I think she
14:35
Speaker 1: found that women in their forties at least, I guess
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Speaker 1: that was her set was they were uh, they gained
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Speaker 1: less weight or they were you know, slimmer, right than
14:45
Speaker 1: non supertasters. But she didn't because they were eating less
14:48
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, but she didn't find it in men,
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Speaker 1: which I thought was odd. I guess men are just
14:52
Speaker 1: like we just shovel whatever. Bring it on. Yeah, it's like, oh,
14:56
Speaker 1: you want me to lose some weight, watch, I'll just
14:57
Speaker 1: drink water for a day and there's fit you pounds
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Speaker 1: should right, So chuck now it's two and if you
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Speaker 1: stick out your tongue, please stick out your tongue. Chuck.
15:07
Speaker 1: You know I bit my tongue almost all the way
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Speaker 1: off when I was a kid. Oh I see that. Wow,
15:12
Speaker 1: it's like Frankenstein's tongue. So all right, chuck, stick out
15:16
Speaker 1: your tongue please. Still. Yeah. Um, so we've got you, mommy.
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Speaker 1: We've got sweet, sour, bitter, salty, fatty yeah yeah, and uh,
15:28
Speaker 1: a lot of it looks like the that's a pretty
15:30
Speaker 1: fat tongue, chuck, it's not thick. This is worse than
15:35
Speaker 1: the beat poop. I like the beat boop um. And
15:40
Speaker 1: we also have what they've recently discovered that we actually
15:43
Speaker 1: have specialized receptor cells that detect carbon dioxide. Yeah, well,
15:48
Speaker 1: should we finish the tongue map real quick at least?
15:50
Speaker 1: And why it's bunk? Sure? Uh, because you were pointing,
15:54
Speaker 1: but people can't see you point, Josh. So the classic
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Speaker 1: tongue map says that bitters in the back, sour was
16:00
Speaker 1: on the side, salty is on the front edge, sweet
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Speaker 1: is on the tip, and umami they're throwing on the
16:06
Speaker 1: posterior and saying that that's where that is. Yeah, they're
16:09
Speaker 1: like that that real estates open. That's but they're fine.
16:14
Speaker 1: They've they've also found that um that there's fat somewhere
16:18
Speaker 1: has to go in there somewhere, right, Yeah, do they
16:20
Speaker 1: know where that is yet? I still knew. Yeah, it's
16:23
Speaker 1: too new from what I understand, right, but I think
16:26
Speaker 1: it's it's not just it's I think it's going to
16:28
Speaker 1: take the the the tongue map away. That's going to
16:32
Speaker 1: be done away with because there are primary tastes, certainly,
16:35
Speaker 1: but they're finding that, you know, the whole tongue map
16:38
Speaker 1: when it was invented in nineteen o one, Yeah, a
16:42
Speaker 1: German researcher. Basically what he did was to say areas
16:46
Speaker 1: of low sensitivity were depicted like there was no sensitivity,
16:50
Speaker 1: like there's those lines that like there's actual borders. And yes,
16:54
Speaker 1: maybe this area of the tongue is higher in recept
16:57
Speaker 1: yourselves for umami or sweet or bitter, but that doesn't
17:00
Speaker 1: mean that it's not found elsewhere on the tongue as well,
17:03
Speaker 1: and so a lot of tastes are a mixture of
17:06
Speaker 1: all these. Number one, well sure, and all he did
17:08
Speaker 1: was interview people, which I thought was odd. Yeah, his
17:11
Speaker 1: research was backed up in nineteen seventy four by Virginia Callings, Right, well,
17:16
Speaker 1: sort of backed up and sort of not well, it
17:18
Speaker 1: was kind of like revised. I guess it's like, yes,
17:20
Speaker 1: his he was right and saying like this area is
17:23
Speaker 1: highing sweet receptors than this area, So you could conceivably
17:27
Speaker 1: put a tongue map, but maybe it was just kind
17:29
Speaker 1: of pushed the wrong way and that um and overlap. Yeah,
17:32
Speaker 1: Callings was the one who was saying like, this is
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Speaker 1: a lot there's a lot of interplay going on, including
17:37
Speaker 1: CEO two. Let's get back. Can we talk about now
17:40
Speaker 1: is the time? That's pretty cool. I mean you sent
17:43
Speaker 1: me this over the emails a couple of days ago
17:46
Speaker 1: and said, dude, you you tapped me on the head
17:49
Speaker 1: and said, dude, you know that bubbly stuff. You think
17:52
Speaker 1: that's that's what's making that taste in your mouth? And
17:54
Speaker 1: it's not. No. Actually, there we have a gene that
17:58
Speaker 1: UM expresses an zyme that's meant to detect carbon dioxide
18:03
Speaker 1: in the bloodstream, right, so we can break it down
18:05
Speaker 1: into useful forms UM, and they've for forever. Basically we
18:11
Speaker 1: thought that anytime we drank a carbonated drink, it was
18:14
Speaker 1: a popping in the little bubbles on our tongue that
18:15
Speaker 1: created that sensation. Not so fast. They put people in
18:19
Speaker 1: a pressurized chamber, hyperbaric chamber, right, given them soda that yeah,
18:25
Speaker 1: has no bubbles present, and people could still detect the
18:28
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide taste. So there's yet another taste. There's no
18:32
Speaker 1: place on the tongue man for carbon dioxide, and yet
18:34
Speaker 1: there's specialized receptor cells for detecting it. Right, yeah, Well,
18:38
Speaker 1: because they like everything else, they said, this is interesting.
18:41
Speaker 1: Let's get some mice and genetically uh make them different
18:45
Speaker 1: and weird and test them out. And they did that
18:48
Speaker 1: and they found it was the same receptor as sour. Right, yes,
18:51
Speaker 1: what they um the sour receptor basically doubles as uh
18:56
Speaker 1: CO two detector as well. They removed that in mice. Yeah, um.
19:00
Speaker 1: And also they put a sensor into one of their nerves,
19:03
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting in and of itself that we
19:05
Speaker 1: can do that. So those those combinations, those series of
19:09
Speaker 1: studies um led to this discovery that we have uh
19:14
Speaker 1: c O two detectors. And what an important discovery that
19:17
Speaker 1: that is? Right, and Chuck, it is is it? I think?
19:20
Speaker 1: So what does it mean? Well, that's the whole thing.
19:22
Speaker 1: It leads you to the question, Chuck, why do we
19:25
Speaker 1: have taste? Anyway? There's one obvious answer is that, um,
19:29
Speaker 1: we are we learned to eat by deriving pleasure from it,
19:33
Speaker 1: and we associate some taste with their pleasurable right. Well yeah,
19:37
Speaker 1: but early man, it was a lot of times like
19:40
Speaker 1: warning systems. Well this is the less obvious answer, right yeah,
19:43
Speaker 1: Like if they ate something sweet, they're like appealed to them.
19:46
Speaker 1: It's you know, it gives them a lot of calories,
19:48
Speaker 1: and so that's a good thing. If they tasted something
19:51
Speaker 1: really bitter, it might be poisonous, so you should spit
19:53
Speaker 1: that out right. Sour could be spoiled something more. It
19:56
Speaker 1: could be you know, a sweet and sour candy, which
19:59
Speaker 1: is yummy, right, right. And and with early man we
20:03
Speaker 1: had yet to figure out a way to encode ideas
20:05
Speaker 1: and warnings about like not to eat something to you know,
20:09
Speaker 1: the written word um, So we had to use our
20:12
Speaker 1: taste senses on our own. And we still That's what's
20:15
Speaker 1: so cool. That's why I love evolution all these years later.
20:18
Speaker 1: That's why we're still attracted to sweet things because that
20:22
Speaker 1: was survival. It gave you calories to live, basically food energy. Right.
20:26
Speaker 1: But we have also gotten to the point where we are,
20:30
Speaker 1: you could say, a reasonably fat society here in the US.
20:35
Speaker 1: And you mix that together with health consciousness or self
20:38
Speaker 1: consciousness especially, and all of a sudden you have artificial sweeteners,
20:43
Speaker 1: which you would think is good for your body. But
20:46
Speaker 1: they found that there's a correlation between U seeing um,
20:50
Speaker 1: artificial sweeteners and type two diabetes, right, And they figured
20:55
Speaker 1: out through this investigation, they figured out that there are
20:58
Speaker 1: tastes cells elsewhere in the body. It's not just the tongue.
21:01
Speaker 1: And we're getting this idea that not only our tastes, um,
21:05
Speaker 1: they're more primary tastes than we realized. Tastes are interplace
21:08
Speaker 1: of of different um receptor cells, and there's taste cells
21:13
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the body, in the guts specifically, but also
21:16
Speaker 1: probably in the pancreas, in um, the liver, in other areas.
21:21
Speaker 1: So these tasting these molecules that are bounds alive and
21:24
Speaker 1: they enter the gut, they start sending out other signals
21:28
Speaker 1: rather than meady right, like what we were saying that
21:32
Speaker 1: the like a bitter taste might be something poisonous. Sometimes
21:36
Speaker 1: you'll eat something poisonous and it gets past the old
21:38
Speaker 1: tongue and you swallow it, and that's when the guts
21:41
Speaker 1: taste cells kick in, and that's why you might like
21:44
Speaker 1: it might spur vomiting. It triggers your vomiting reaction. Thank god. Yeah. UM,
21:49
Speaker 1: that's one way with the type two diabetes. Uh. With
21:53
Speaker 1: the sweet receptors in the gut are signaled by something sweet,
21:59
Speaker 1: they tell the blood to start absorbing insulin. Right, they start,
22:03
Speaker 1: they tell the surrounding cells to start absorbing insulin. Glue coast,
22:08
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, burn for energy, So insulin which actually chuck you.
22:13
Speaker 1: Remember we've talked about before, and I think whenever we
22:15
Speaker 1: talked about longevity, insulins like the worst thing for your body.
22:18
Speaker 1: But we use it to go into cells, to basically
22:21
Speaker 1: open the cells, so gluecoast can go be burned, um
22:25
Speaker 1: and you. But if the glue coast doesn't arrive, if
22:29
Speaker 1: there's no sugar eaten and it's just an artificial sweetener,
22:32
Speaker 1: that signal is still triggered. The insulince still goes and
22:35
Speaker 1: jams open your cells, but nothing gets burned, and the
22:38
Speaker 1: insulin levels go up, and you have type two diabetes.
22:41
Speaker 1: So that's the tie between drinking like a diet soda,
22:44
Speaker 1: right and leading potentially leading to diabetes. Right. But isn't
22:47
Speaker 1: that interesting that we figured out something new about taste
22:50
Speaker 1: That it's all over, it's in all over sensation is
22:52
Speaker 1: what they're coming up with, Right, that's crazy. So what
22:55
Speaker 1: else do we have, Chuckers, Well, I think we finally
22:57
Speaker 1: need to just um map out the supertaste or thing
23:00
Speaker 1: just a little bit more, right, because supertasters are pretty
23:03
Speaker 1: cool and how it all happened is really cool. Shall
23:07
Speaker 1: I tell the story? I'd like to hear this story.
23:09
Speaker 1: Way back in the nineteen thirties, a scientist name Arthur
23:12
Speaker 1: Fox from DuPont was pouring some and this is like
23:18
Speaker 1: every like, osha, this is the worst nightmare when they
23:21
Speaker 1: hear stories about this laboratory stories like this. This dude
23:24
Speaker 1: was pouring some PTC. Do you want to say the
23:28
Speaker 1: long name? I do, but I have to find it first.
23:31
Speaker 1: I'm not prepared to say it. It is fennel theo
23:35
Speaker 1: carbon minde. Yeah, very nice, thank you. So he was
23:39
Speaker 1: pouring some of this PTC it's an organic uh compound,
23:43
Speaker 1: into a beaker and the way he described it was
23:46
Speaker 1: he said it suddenly became a cloud that started shooting
23:49
Speaker 1: all over the room and this is when Ocean's like,
23:51
Speaker 1: oh god, and uh. It basically filled up this room.
23:55
Speaker 1: And he was in there with his partner and his
23:57
Speaker 1: buddy was like, a ah ah, it's awful, it's so better.
24:02
Speaker 1: And he was like, what are you talking about? Wow,
24:04
Speaker 1: that's not bitter. What what do you mean? And then
24:06
Speaker 1: you know that triggered the conversation. Wait a minute, what's
24:09
Speaker 1: going on here? You had a really awful reaction. And
24:12
Speaker 1: apparently I've seen studies on YouTube this they don't use
24:15
Speaker 1: PTC anymore dangerous, but uh, apparently it's so bitter, it's
24:20
Speaker 1: like the reactions are hysterical. So he goes home and
24:24
Speaker 1: he starts putting this stuff on his family's tongues and
24:27
Speaker 1: his friends tongues to see if they react the same way.
24:30
Speaker 1: And he found that there's no rhyme or reason who
24:34
Speaker 1: it happens to, because it's a genetic trait. And they said,
24:38
Speaker 1: it's what they used to use this for. It's so
24:40
Speaker 1: specific of a genetic trait. They used to use it
24:44
Speaker 1: for paternity cases like up through like the nineteen seventies. Yeah,
24:49
Speaker 1: it's as they said, it's the most like, uh, one
24:52
Speaker 1: of the most common mentally and traits right up there
24:54
Speaker 1: with like eye color and blood type. Is whether or
24:56
Speaker 1: not PTC makes you like freak out with bitter really, Yeah,
25:01
Speaker 1: that's a terrible test. Yeah. So, and it's it's a
25:05
Speaker 1: specific gene. There's a dominant allele for the T A
25:08
Speaker 1: S two R to eight gene. Right, they've they've isolated that. Yes,
25:12
Speaker 1: seventy percent of people this is what's weird. Se can
25:16
Speaker 1: gets the bitter taste. Fifty eight percent of Australians and
25:21
Speaker 1: of Native Americans in both North and South America, almost
25:26
Speaker 1: all of them have that reaction. Really Yeah, that crazy. Yeah,
25:29
Speaker 1: I don't even know what it means. I just thought
25:30
Speaker 1: it was interesting. So the in UM there was a
25:34
Speaker 1: researcher from Yale who coined the term super tasters. Right, yes,
25:38
Speaker 1: and it's not just bitter and it's not just people
25:40
Speaker 1: who react to um PTC or PCP. All right, everyone
25:45
Speaker 1: reacts to PC. Yeah, but whether or not you get
25:48
Speaker 1: you beat up ten cops I think is probably that's
25:51
Speaker 1: a praternity test to let's see how you react to PCP. Right, Uh,
25:55
Speaker 1: it's not just this bitter taste, right, you can have
25:58
Speaker 1: a supertaster who really tastes sweet things, really tastes you mommy.
26:03
Speaker 1: Really it's a primary taste, right, Yeah, that's just heightened
26:06
Speaker 1: And like we said, the spoiler is you just generally
26:09
Speaker 1: have more of these pepiles. Yeah, you have more taste
26:13
Speaker 1: buds of the type than other people. Yeah, and it
26:15
Speaker 1: can be a good thing, like to have a heightened
26:17
Speaker 1: sense can be good in certain respects, but it also apparently,
26:20
Speaker 1: UM like coffee and Brussels sprouts and really sweet and
26:25
Speaker 1: spicy things. Super tasters can't handle that a lot of times.
26:28
Speaker 1: So it's a curse as well as a blessing. Yeah,
26:30
Speaker 1: I would say I can't handle broccoli, but it has
26:33
Speaker 1: nothing to do with taste, you know, I like all that.
26:35
Speaker 1: I've been eating beats like crazy lately, ever since I
26:38
Speaker 1: beat salad. Yeah, I've been making my own beat salad.
26:41
Speaker 1: I've been grilling beats, a little balsam, a little olive oil,
26:44
Speaker 1: not hand that I'll have to try it, put it
26:46
Speaker 1: on the grill, and then the next day you're gonna
26:48
Speaker 1: think you need to go to the doctor. But it's
26:50
Speaker 1: just the beats, that's all I'll say. So that's pretty
26:57
Speaker 1: much it. Like we said, UM, if you're a super taster. Also,
27:00
Speaker 1: it supports that um that aversion to foods that you
27:05
Speaker 1: can taste more than other people. Super tasters who um
27:08
Speaker 1: are are sensitive to sweet ten to eat less sweets, etcetera.
27:13
Speaker 1: But they also avoid leafy greens, which is not good. No,
27:16
Speaker 1: you gotta have that. Yeah, you pregnant. Actually, we forgot
27:19
Speaker 1: to mention they don't use PTC anymore, but they do
27:21
Speaker 1: use p R O P as the test now, which
27:24
Speaker 1: is a it's a synthetic compound. They just call it prop, right,
27:28
Speaker 1: and they use it in um thyroid medicine. Right. Yeah,
27:31
Speaker 1: but now that's that's the standard supertaster test to see
27:35
Speaker 1: if you have that better reaction to that. So they
27:37
Speaker 1: just give you thyroid medicine or they drop some prop
27:40
Speaker 1: on your tongue. I don't know how it works. Weird. Uh.
27:43
Speaker 1: And then lastly, chuck the answer to why a lot
27:46
Speaker 1: of stuff tastes like chicken. I don't know. This surprised me.
27:48
Speaker 1: They have UM, well, at least that cornell. Using gas chromatography,
27:53
Speaker 1: they have isolated a thousand UM concentrations chemical concentrations in
27:58
Speaker 1: n chicken that that contain tastings that the human tongue
28:03
Speaker 1: can taste or that the human brain can sensus taste.
28:06
Speaker 1: And they used to think it was hundreds of thousands.
28:09
Speaker 1: They're like, no, it's just thousands, and chicken is like, well,
28:15
Speaker 1: I made up the chicken part. That's my theory. And
28:18
Speaker 1: my theory is that it's because there's only a thousand
28:21
Speaker 1: instead of a hundred thousand. There's your answer right there.
28:24
Speaker 1: And then lastly check that also makes me wonder if
28:26
Speaker 1: there's a thousand chemicals and they used to think it
28:29
Speaker 1: was hundreds of thousands. So there's hundreds of thousands of
28:32
Speaker 1: chemicals out there, but we can only taste a thousand.
28:34
Speaker 1: It's kind of like light, you know, we can only
28:36
Speaker 1: see within a certain band of light. Makes you wonder
28:39
Speaker 1: how things that we can't taste taste. You just chew
28:43
Speaker 1: on that one. And if you want to know more
28:44
Speaker 1: about taste, go to how stuff works dot com where
28:48
Speaker 1: you can type the word taste in the handy search bar. Uh.
28:51
Speaker 1: And also, uh, this is I think requisite listening for
28:56
Speaker 1: a molecular gastronomy podcasts that will do some time in
28:59
Speaker 1: the future, don't you think? All right, let's love to
29:01
Speaker 1: do one on that. Alright chuck. Then you know what
29:03
Speaker 1: time it is, right listener? Mail? Or are we doing
29:06
Speaker 1: some sort of uh Facebook or anything? Oh wait, we
29:09
Speaker 1: got our big, big announcement. Yeah that's right, thank you
29:13
Speaker 1: for reminding us. Go ahead, all Atlanta event right, Yeah,
29:17
Speaker 1: we're gonna do an Atlanta thing similar to what we
29:20
Speaker 1: did in New York. Yes, because we got called out
29:22
Speaker 1: by all the Atlanta folks like you go to New
29:24
Speaker 1: York in New York, New York. What about Atlanta. Yeah,
29:27
Speaker 1: well we're like, yeah, we kind of have to. So yeah,
29:31
Speaker 1: we're gonna do trivia night, right, all comers can come
29:34
Speaker 1: take us on. We'll figure out the details. But um,
29:38
Speaker 1: we're looking for venue still. Yeah, we could use you
29:41
Speaker 1: people for details. If you were in Atlanta and you
29:43
Speaker 1: have some connections with what might be a good venue
29:46
Speaker 1: to host our trivia, please get in touch with us. Yeah,
29:49
Speaker 1: so yeah, we'll keep you posted. If you have any suggestions, comments,
29:52
Speaker 1: whatever about the Atlanta thing, email us. And now wait, well,
29:55
Speaker 1: should be sometime in August we should point out. Okay,
29:58
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't have a lockdown yet, but look
30:00
Speaker 1: forward in the next like six weeks. Now listen to me.
30:03
Speaker 1: All right, all right, Josh, I'm gonna call this rare
30:07
Speaker 1: shout outs because we don't do these very often. Shouts out,
30:10
Speaker 1: shouts out, shouts out like the new Williams Sapphire. Hi,
30:15
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck. My husband and I are huge fans
30:18
Speaker 1: of your podcast. We eagerly wait every Tuesday and Thursday
30:21
Speaker 1: so we can hear what you have to say. I
30:23
Speaker 1: guess that proves your fans. Yeah, uh, now you can
30:26
Speaker 1: be my Heroes as well. Next Saturday, July is my
30:30
Speaker 1: husband's twenty four b day. Chuck, this is very kind
30:34
Speaker 1: of you, and I don't know. We don't do this
30:35
Speaker 1: very often. We just bought our first house. He made
30:37
Speaker 1: me promise not to buy him anything. I guess because
30:39
Speaker 1: they just spend on their money in the house. I
30:41
Speaker 1: wonder if you give him a shout. I know you
30:43
Speaker 1: don't do this often, so let me tell you why
30:45
Speaker 1: he's cool enough to get a one of a kind
30:47
Speaker 1: birthday greeting. His name is DJ Vile. Seriously, he's in
30:52
Speaker 1: your Facebook crew v I l a d J Bile
30:56
Speaker 1: and I don't think no, I think that's his name.
30:58
Speaker 1: His name is like Donald James Vial or something. Well,
31:01
Speaker 1: if he ever becomes a DJ, then he's all set. Yeah,
31:04
Speaker 1: he's like, just call me me. He listens to every
31:07
Speaker 1: one of your podcasts. He's a huge Simpsons fan. Well,
31:13
Speaker 1: I mean those are good, but that's not a reason
31:14
Speaker 1: to shout out. But these are. He ran a tin
31:17
Speaker 1: k as green Man. I know I saw that. Was
31:20
Speaker 1: that a root suit? It was either yeah, I think
31:23
Speaker 1: green Man in the root suit or one in the
31:25
Speaker 1: same So you actually ran a full tank screen man.
31:28
Speaker 1: And uh, lastly, he'll be spending his birthday driving to
31:31
Speaker 1: present his research entitled this interfraction Variability of long tumor
31:37
Speaker 1: motion using four D Cone beam CT at a Physicist
31:42
Speaker 1: medical conference in Philly. And this dude is twenty four
31:45
Speaker 1: years old and he's doing that. My brains melt. So
31:48
Speaker 1: with that on the seventeenth, Happy birthday, DJ Vile, Happy birthday,
31:54
Speaker 1: DJ Vile. Thank you very much for listening. And Julie,
31:57
Speaker 1: your wife sounds okay a very kind man. Should does.
32:00
Speaker 1: And good luck presenting your findings, and uh, best wishes
32:04
Speaker 1: for your new home. All right, Chuck, thank you for
32:08
Speaker 1: the listener mail. Now it's time for shouts out to
32:13
Speaker 1: Kiva Kiva dot org slash team slash stuff you should know,
32:17
Speaker 1: or if you just go to community you can search
32:19
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Join our Kiva team. We are
32:21
Speaker 1: on a mission to raise a quarter of a million
32:24
Speaker 1: dollars in loans and we're making it and we're doing
32:27
Speaker 1: it with how many we have hundreds of thousands of
32:29
Speaker 1: stuff you should know listeners. We have like two thousand
32:32
Speaker 1: and change members on the Kiva team, so there's like
32:36
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty thousand of you out there that
32:37
Speaker 1: are really disappointment, right and this just this, But on
32:41
Speaker 1: the same token, we're very very proud of the two
32:44
Speaker 1: thousand and change who are members of this stuff You
32:46
Speaker 1: should Know Kiva Team because so far they've raised a
32:50
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy thousand and then some. So far, we're
32:53
Speaker 1: on the way to y Yeah, we are included, but
32:55
Speaker 1: there's people on there who put us to shame, you know,
32:58
Speaker 1: they're lighting it up on their Yeah, there's some really
33:01
Speaker 1: great people, and there's somebody who's like, um, uh, that's
33:04
Speaker 1: somebody got a bonus at work and made alone. Um
33:07
Speaker 1: somebody I think an auto repair wasn't as much as
33:11
Speaker 1: they thought, so they used the difference on Kiva. They
33:13
Speaker 1: made alone on Kiva. People that just make us look
33:16
Speaker 1: like vile, Like twenty bucks on the ground and like,
33:20
Speaker 1: if I'm not hungry, I might think about not spinning
33:24
Speaker 1: it on beer and giving it to keep it. I
33:26
Speaker 1: have a similar problem. Uh, So, thumbs up to our stuff.
33:30
Speaker 1: You should Know Kiva Team. If you want kudos from us,
33:33
Speaker 1: you can join it yourself. Again. That's www. Dot kiva
33:36
Speaker 1: dot org. Slash Team slash Stuff you should Know is
33:40
Speaker 1: a very welcoming community. Of people. Right, great people were
33:43
Speaker 1: on Facebook. We have a Facebook page with twelve thousand
33:47
Speaker 1: and then some fans, and we are extremely active on it. Yeah,
33:51
Speaker 1: so it's actually a fun Facebook page. Right. I should
33:53
Speaker 1: say Chuck is way more active than I am, but
33:56
Speaker 1: we called. Yeah I do Twitter, um, but we were
34:00
Speaker 1: both on there. But Chuck is really really good about
34:02
Speaker 1: responding to people's comments and questions and stuff. So if
34:06
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34:09
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34:12
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34:15
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34:18
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34:20
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34:22
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34:25
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34:29
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34:32
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34:39
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34:49
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