Yum, yum!

Valsala R takes a deep dive into the world of flavour.

I wasn’t very well recently and was taking all kinds of medicine. When you’re swallowing medicine, we all know how food suddenly doesn’t taste so good and we lose our appetite. But this time, I noticed a strange phenomenon. I couldn’t tolerate even normal salt levels in my food. However little was put in, it tasted as if it was a bucketful. Eww… Instructions went out to my cook to use next to nothing until I declared that all was well again.

This set me thinking… about taste. Many of us are lucky enough to eat more for pleasure and as routine than for immediate need. How many of us are actually hungry before our next meal? But once those aromas start to waft out of the kitchen our mouths begin to water and we imagine that we are feeling a little peckish.

We’ve been taught that there are 5 tastes — sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. Not heard of that last one? It’s very important for many of us. Umami is a savoury taste, something that is a big part of seafood, meats, aged cheeses, soy foods, mushrooms, and even tomatoes. It’s a rich taste and tends to linger. And it’s also a bit addictive! Try making noodles at home without a dash of Ajinomoto and you’ll see just what I mean.

The flower-like buds that we call ‘taste buds’ on our tongue have 10 – 50 sensitive microscopic hairs called microvilli, that are connected to different nerve fibres — the facial, glossopharyngeal, and vagus nerves. This information is then transferred from the thalamus to other brain regions. Luckily for us (and my distaste for salt!), the taste buds get regenerated around every 10 days, so if your burnt tongue feels sore, not to worry. It’ll soon be fine again.

But it isn’t just the taste that we care about when we eat, is it? The look, the texture (so many people I know, dislike the smooth texture of brinjal) and the temperature of the food and most essentially, the smell affects our response to food. While the tongue communicates the ‘taste’ to the brain, other sensory organs communicate their bits and the brain integrates the whole to form a ‘flavourful’ experience.

Try changing the colour of someone’s favourite food with some food dye. Do you think they would like it as much? This is why even before eating we respond either positively or negatively to food. Remember how food is unappetising when you have a stuffy nose? We need the aroma to tickle our taste buds.

At some point, most of us have seen diagrams of the tongue that show how different areas of the tongue identify different tastes. Some areas may be more sensitive to a particular taste but all areas can identify tastes.

Those little bumps that you see when you stick your tongue out are not the taste buds. They are the papillae which contain numerous taste buds. Everyone has a different number of taste buds and the number you have could make you super sensitive to taste. You just might have a career as a food taster. If you are a super taster, it could prove convenient to blame your super sensitive papillae for your dislike of bitter gourd!

In recent times, scientists are beginning to think that there might actually be a 6th taste – ‘fat’. It is thought that some of the 10,000 taste buds on the tongue respond to the flavour of fat. There’s hardly any yummy food that we eat whose flavour isn’t enhanced by a dash of fat. Even your salad could do with a dash of olive oil or a few flakes of cheese to feel truly satisfying.

And the Japanese are researching yet another ‘taste’. Kokumi seems to be closely allied to umami; just richer and more complex.

The most expensive flavour in the world is probably saffron with its intense flavour. But the most popular and the one used in both eastern and western cuisine is pepper. Grown predominantly in India, black pepper finds mention in ancient history and was the single biggest draw for ancient mariners who came to India for trade.

But I bet that if you ask yourself what’s your favourite ‘taste’, most of you will say ‘sweetness’. This, of course, is the pleasure taste. It makes you feel good and gives you much needed energy. Surprisingly though, vanilla is the most popular flavour; even beating chocolate.

What’s your favourite ice-cream flavour? Mine’s chocolate!