24 Apr The Guardian: Smells delicious: our tongues can detect odours, study suggests
Posted at 13:04h
in Media Mentions
The tongue does not just detect taste, but might pick up on odours too, according to research shedding new light on how we perceive flavour.
The tongue has long been known to detect whether something tastes sweet, sour, salty, bitter or umami (savouriness) thanks to cells that carry taste receptors – proteins that interact with particular molecules in food.
But now it seems the tongue might have more muscle than previously thought when it comes to determining flavour, with researchers revealing taste cells also bear odour-detecting proteins.