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So Many Flavours

Have you ever stopped to think about why your favourite foods taste so good? If you look closely at your tongue in a mirror, you will notice that it’s completely covered in tiny bumps. Your taste buds can be found inside those bumps. They allow you to experience the sweet flavour of a fresh chocolate chip cookie or the sour taste of a lemon.

However, the taste buds also get some help from your nose. While you’re chewing, the smell of the food travels up your nose. Your brain pairs the information from your taste buds with the information from your nose to determine the flavour. If your nose is stuffy, you might notice that foods do not taste as good. That’s because when your nose is stuffed, it can’t receive the smell of the food you’re chewing. Therefore, your nose can’t send that information to your brain. Without smell, your taste buds can tell your brain a little about what you’re eating, such as whether it’s sweet or bitter, but they cannot give the whole picture.

Children are born with around ten thousand taste buds. Every week or so, when they start to wear out, they are replaced by new taste buds. Also, taste buds will grow back after getting damaged, and their recovery time is quick. For example, if you burn your tongue on hot chocolate, your taste buds will be up and working again in a few short days. However, as we get older, some of our taste buds are not replaced. The number of taste buds might drop down to between two thousand and five thousand for an older person. At the same time, older people’s sense of smell decreases. Without a strong sense of smell, it is more difficult for the brain to recognise flavours. This explains why tastes can change over time.

The more taste buds you have, the stronger the flavours you can experience. People with over ten thousand taste buds are called supertasters, and their experience of flavours is more intense. Children, who have a lot of taste buds, often taste flavours more strongly, too. This is one reason why some children prefer not to eat certain foods. The slightly bitter flavour of asparagus tastes fine to most adults, but the bitterness is much stronger to children since they have a greater number of taste buds.

Besides giving foods their flavour, taste buds have another important job: to help keep us safe. Foods that might be dangerous often taste bitter or sour, which means that our sense of taste helps us test the foods we eat and may warn us if something is unsafe.