how comes we taste things and each ingredient has it’s own taste and flavour?

Question: how comes we taste things and each ingredient has it's own taste and flavour?

Asked by syria12345 to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
- Lily Asquith answered on 21 Jun 2010:
  
  Your taste buds respond differently to different chemicals in the food you eat.
  
  I don’t know anything about biology, hopefully one of the others will give you a better answer!
- Laura Maliszewski answered on 21 Jun 2010:
  
  Good question!
  This one is a mix of chemistry and biology. You have cells in your mouth that recognize different chemicals and relay that information to your brain.
  
  As your food reacts with different combination of these cells, you sense different tastes.
  
  There are a lot of steps involved in how we taste, and some ways to trick your body so that sweet tastes salty and salty tastes sweet.
  
  Learn more here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Tasting—How-Do-We-Taste
- Mark Roberts answered on 21 Jun 2010:
  
  A good biochemical qu!
  
  In your tongue there are lots of little receptors that bind the chemicals in the food – these then pass a signal onto the brain which senses it as a flavour – depending on which receptors get stimulated depends on the flavour that you taste
  
  As ingredients are themselves chemicals or a mix of chemicals you just sense them in the same way
- Sarah Bardsley answered on 21 Jun 2010:
  
  Its all to do with the different taste sensors on your tongue and the chemical composition of food. We have the ability to taste saltiness, sweetness, bitterness, sourness and savoriness. When a food with a certain flavour hits the tongue, the sensors detect this and send signals to the brain telling you how it tastes. Which will hopefully be delicious!

Question: how comes we taste things and each ingredient has it's own taste and flavour?

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