The Real reason sweet tastes sweet скачать в хорошем качестве

The Real reason sweet tastes sweet

You might think that the sweet taste of fruit is all down to those natural sugars. Think again, says Veronique Greenwood. We tend to think of sugar as the supreme ruler of the sensation of sweetness. If an orange tastes sweet, it's because of the sugars it contains hit the sweet receptors in your taste buds. The same, it’s fair to say, should ring true for any other fruit, from blueberries to tomatoes. But Linda Bartoshuk, a University of Florida taste scientist interviewed for this column before, and her colleagues think there is a different explanation. They've found that the chemicals responsible for a large chunk of the perception of sweetness in fruit are ones you smell – not the ones you taste. Now, this is a different phenomenon than the old trick of plugging your nose while you eat a jelly bean and finding you can't identify its flavour. If you haven't done this, try it – it's a marvellous glimpse into how much of flavour isn't about the tongue. At first all you can taste is sweet, but when you open your nose, the sensation of strawberry or root beer or whatever the specific flavour is washes over you. I knew that the issue existed, but I didn't think anything hot had been done on it, and I was right - Linda Bartoshuk In the case of Bartoshuk and company's recent work, however, it isn't the complex overtones of flavour they are talking about. This is more fundamental. It's the sweetness itself. Bartoshuk says that the idea that volatile compounds emanating from fruit could be linked to sweetness was being discussed in the 1970s. But the effects of individual volatiles were very small, and the amounts of each chemical in the fruit were small as well. “I knew that the issue existed, but I didn't think anything hot had been done on it, and I was right,” Bartoshuk says. A few years ago, however, while she and colleagues were working on a study attempting to dissect exactly which molecules are responsible for what you experience while eating a tomato, she found something surprising.