So the other day I found myself eating broccoli and liking it, I had to stop and wonder where
did I go wrong in life?
What happened to my tastebuds?
Hey guys, Julia here for DNews.
Right now, there are thousands of tastebuds on your tongue, some estimates say as many
as 10,000.
And no you don’t have specific areas of your tongue for certain flavors, the taste
buds are all kind of mixed together.
but what you’re seeing on your tongue, those little bumps are little clumps of taste buds,
which each contain 50-100 taste cells, kind of like a head of broccoli.
One study got up close and personal with these miniscule mysteries.
Tastebuds look kind of like little bulbs, little flowers, with receptor cells looking
like the petals surrounded by blood cells which in turn is surrounded by collagen.
These taste cells take chemical signals from the food you eat and send it to taste centers
in your brain.
Seriously, there’s a place in your brain just for tasting called the Gustatory cortex.
Speaking of broccoli though, like when I was little I hated broccoli, like hated it.
Now I eat it raw just like potato chips, like WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.
WHAT HAVE I BECOME?
Is this adulthood?
If it is, I don’t like it.
So anyways, have my taste buds changed as I grew up?
Well yeah, kind of.
It’s no secret kids like sweet things.
But maybe it’s biology.
One study published in the journal Physiology Behavior, found that growing bones release
hormones that cause children to crave the sweets.
That way their growing body get the energy it needs.
The researchers also found that that in people whose bones stopped growing, they had less
of those hormones.
So maybe that’s why adults find overly sweet things sickening and prefer other flavors
like delicious bitter broccoli.
As for your actual taste buds, well the cells in your tastebuds don't last for long, they
change all the time.
The average lifespan is anywhere from a few days to a month.
But a lot, I mean a lot of things can affect your sense of taste.
From, temperature, to altitude to music.
That Gustatory cortex I mentioned takes in information from a lot of different sources
from your other senses.
Like sound, a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception
and Performance found that umami foods taste better to us in loud environments, while we
can’t taste sweet things as well.
And memory affects taste too.
There’s a thing called conditioned taste aversion or CTA.
Most of us have experienced this, for example my sister hates buffalo chicken dip, I mean
hates it, because a few years ago she ate it around the same time she got a nasty stomach
flu.
So now a circuit in her amygdala is like, GIRL DO NOT EAT THAT DIP, YOU WILL GET SICK.
And a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience found that that negative associate is particularly
strong if you’re in the same place as that bad experience.
Not to get all evolutionary psychology on you, but that makes sense.
If our ancestors wandering about savannah came across some bad berries, they’d be
more likely to survive if their brain associated that place and berry with throwing up or something
so they wouldn’t eat it again.
but on the other hand, good experiences might make food taste better, so if you want to
one day get your kid to like vegetables, make it fun!
Like put broccoli on top of mashed potato mountains so it looks like a little landscape..
okay yeah you know what…
I don’t think you can make vegetables fun.
So no, that whole your taste buds change every 7 years is a bit of wives tale.
Your taste buds change all the time, and a lot of things affect the how something actually
tastes.
To learn more about how music can make you taste things differently, check out this great
video from our friends over at BritLab, it’s blew my mind, go watch it, i really recommend
it.