Our Senses

[Guest]

A while ago I was sitting in a training meeting about the dangers of H2S.  It is the 2nd or 3rd most deadly naturally occurring toxins on earth.  We notice it most predominantly by smell.  It is the rotten egg smell that we smell with spoiling foods.  And contrary to Wikipedia and common belief, it is most common in the food processing industry as opposed to the oil & gas industry.

The instructor noted that while there is a detectable smell at 5 ppm (parts per million) or less, our smell is deadened at around 100 ppm.  He began giving a rant stating that it still smells.  You just can't smell it because your nerves are dead.  After he repeated that same line of reasoning in three different ways, the class was silent.  I then interjected,"So, if a tree falls in the forest."  Hillarity ensued.

So, now that I've covered smell and hearing, I just heard something rather odd.  Taste.

Apparently, my son ffenix came across an article that stated that there was a plant that was actually 100 times sweeter than sugar. But we humans simply can't taste it, so it can't be used as a sweetener.  Now this one had me really puzzled.  How???

With smell, if you sense of smell is deadened, that's fine.  But you can still smell it at other concentrations were our sense is not deadened.

With sound, you're not around, then you can't hear it.  You may say it is "blocked" by distance in the case of the tree in the forest.  But as you get close enough, you can hear it.

With light, there are frequencies that are not detectable to the human eye.  But we have instruments that detect electromagnetic radiation at all sorts of frequencies.

With taste, what is the deal?  What method is there to detect taste other than our tongue?

Quote

There are receptors T1R2 + T1R3) in the apical membrane that bind glucose (sucrose - a combination of glucose and fructose - and other carbohydrates). Binding to the receptor activates a G-protein which in turn activates phospholipase C (PLC-ß2). PLC generates IP3 and diacyl glycerol (DAG). These intracellular messengers, directly or indirectly, activate the TRPM5 channel and depolarization occurs. Ca2+ enters the cell through depolarization-activated Ca2+ channels, transmitter is released increasing firing in the primary afferent nerve.

OK, now that we have an explanation, I guess we can move on.  Not really.  This doesn't really explain the statement made earlier.

To help my son with this explanation, I gave the tree analogy which he was familiar with.  It's a question of definition.  If we define sound as "what we hear", then no it does not make a sound.  Because no one heard it.  But if we define it as "the propagation of wave energy sourced from physical vibration through a physical medium", then we must conclude that the tree did indeed make a sound.

With taste?  What the?

Edited April 17, 2017 by Guest

[zil]

So what you're saying is that most of us like to have our primary afferent nerve stimulated?

I assume all that stuff in the quote is testable, so that's how they know that something is "sweet" - it triggers all the necessary chemical reactions to qualify as "sweet", but the human nervous system cannot handle that much input (like when you get an ice cream headache, or how a caress feels good and a punch hurts).  Also, perhaps they diluted the super-sweetener sufficient to determine its sweetness, and what they mean to say is that without processing (bad word to so many), humans have no use for it - because it deadens our primary afferent nerve instead of stimulating it?

(I'm totally making this up, but there's my ignorant guess.)

[Vort]

FWIW, I don't believe it. If something is "100 times sweeter than sugar", then a given concentration in solution should taste as sweet as a 100x-concentration of sugar water. As far as I know, "sweetness" is defined by taste. The idea that something is "sweet" but cannot be biochemically tasted by human beings is self-negating, a contradiction in terms.

[Blackmarch]

9 hours ago, Carborendum said:

A while ago I was sitting in a training meeting about the dangers of H2S.  It is the 2nd or 3rd most deadly naturally occurring toxins on earth.  We notice it most predominantly by smell.  It is the rotten egg smell that we smell with spoiling foods.  And contrary to Wikipedia and common belief, it is most common in the food processing industry as opposed to the oil & gas industry.

The instructor noted that while there is a detectable smell at 5 ppm (parts per million) or less, our smell is deadened at around 100 ppm.  He began giving a rant stating that it still smells.  You just can't smell it because your nerves are dead.  After he repeated that same line of reasoning in three different ways, the class was silent.  I then interjected,"So, if a tree falls in the forest."  Hillarity ensued.

So, now that I've covered smell and hearing, I just heard something rather odd.  Taste.

Apparently, my son ffenix came across an article that stated that there was a plant that was actually 100 times sweeter than sugar. But we humans simply can't taste it, so it can't be used as a sweetener.  Now this one had me really puzzled.  How???

With smell, if you sense of smell is deadened, that's fine.  But you can still smell it at other concentrations were our sense is not deadened.

With sound, you're not around, then you can't hear it.  You may say it is "blocked" by distance in the case of the tree in the forest.  But as you get close enough, you can hear it.

With light, there are frequencies that are not detectable to the human eye.  But we have instruments that detect electromagnetic radiation at all sorts of frequencies.

With taste, what is the deal?  What method is there to detect taste other than our tongue?

OK, now that we have an explanation, I guess we can move on.  Not really.  This doesn't really explain the statement made earlier.

To help my son with this explanation, I gave the tree analogy which he was familiar with.  It's a question of definition.  If we define sound as "what we hear", then no it does not make a sound.  Because no one heard it.  But if we define it as "the propagation of wave energy sourced from physical vibration through a physical medium", then we must conclude that the tree did indeed make a sound.

With taste?  What the?

Molecular shape. Certain shapes fit certain types of taste bud clls, which are also limited by how much, and how much of a reaction they can go through. Apparently theres a chef who uses chemistry to come up with really odd food combos that are real money wonners.

If i also recall the industry can also use tissue samples from animals to help determine tastes.

[jerome1232]

AFAIK the artificial sweeteners we use *are* way, way sweeter than sucrose.

Sucralose is like 300x sucrose. Aspartame 200x. Saccharine 300x. Stevia 150x.

I don't buy it either.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, jerome1232 said:

AFAIK the artificial sweeteners we use *are* way, way sweeter than sucrose.

Sucralose is like 300x sucrose. Aspartame 200x. Saccharine 300x. Stevia 150x.

I don't buy it either.

8 hours ago, Blackmarch said:

Molecular shape. Certain shapes fit certain types of taste bud clls, which are also limited by how much, and how much of a reaction they can go through. Apparently theres a chef who uses chemistry to come up with really odd food combos that are real money wonners.

If i also recall the industry can also use tissue samples from animals to help determine tastes.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/05/how_sweet_it_is.html

It's not the shape.  There is normally a reaction with the food and our receptors that cause other chemicals to form.  The formation of these chemicals (outlined in the quote in the OP) is what our brain interprets as "sweet".  But the idea that if this is what tells our brains that it is sweet, but for some reason we can taste this "mystery plant" makes me wonder what the heck?

[wenglund]

Could there be a taste spectrum similar to sight/light where the human tongue cannot detect certain types of sweetness just as the human eye cannot detect certain types of light or the human ear cannot detect certain sounds?

Also, our brains create sensory filters that prevent us from becoming overwhelmed with sensations. Maybe the sweetness filter kicks in at 100 ppm?

Just thinking a bit outside the box.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, wenglund said:

Could there be a taste spectrum similar to sight/light where the human tongue cannot detect certain types of sweetness just as the human eye cannot detect certain types of light or the human ear cannot detect certain sounds?

Also, our brains create sensory filters that prevent us from becoming overwhelmed with sensations. Maybe the sweetness filter kicks in at 100 ppm?

Just thinking a bit outside the box.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

This was essentially the question I asked.  But so far, I have yet to find what that "thing" is.  With sound, it is vibrational energy.  With light, it is electromagnetic energy.

What is it with taste that would justify the statement this "expert" made?

[wenglund]

29 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

This was essentially the question I asked.  But so far, I have yet to find what that "thing" is.  With sound, it is vibrational energy.  With light, it is electromagnetic energy.

What is it with taste that would justify the statement this "expert" made?

I wonder if snakes may provide an answer since they use their tongues as well as their noses to "smell." Perhaps there is chemical "energy" that the human tongue cannot detect?

I happen to be among a rare breed of "super tasters." I discovered this during a college communications class when our teacher passed around strips of litmus paper and had each of the 50 or so students suck on it. All the students but me and one other person could suck on the strip without any reaction, whereas I and the other student almost vomited. The teacher explained that the chemical was only detectable to a small number of people with a certain genetic trait. It was an object lesson on not assuming that everyone senses things the same way, which led to a discussion on being sensitive to differences in communications. But, it helped me to understand my unique reaction to certain foods.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[anatess2]

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

This was essentially the question I asked.  But so far, I have yet to find what that "thing" is.  With sound, it is vibrational energy.  With light, it is electromagnetic energy.

What is it with taste that would justify the statement this "expert" made?

Okay, as @jerome1232 mentioned, there are things more than 100x sweeter than sugar.  I think Brazzein (sp?) is 2,000x sweeter than sugar.  Brazzein is found in some town in Africa and the locals eat it because it is sweet.  The thing is, though, once they're used to the sweetness of Brazzein, they taste everything else as not sweet.  Now, from what I understand, the taste receptors of Gorillas have a slight difference from the human taste receptors such that they don't taste Brazzein as sweet.

So, that said, taste, unlike sound, is purely subjective.  Something that tastes sweet to some may taste not sweet at all to others.  Therefore, there is no measuring device (other than the tongue's taste receptor) that can measure taste.  So, just the fact that scientists can say Brazzein is 2000 times sweeter than sugar, means that there is a way to measure sweetness.  But this measurement is not based on chemical composition - like the amount of glucose or something.  Brazzein, for one, was discovered to have its sweetness come from some specific protein in its chemical composition.  So, unlike sound - which comes from vibration and can be objectively measured without the ear - taste is present (or absent) from all elements.  The only way to measure it is to conduct a taste test - usually in comparison to 2% sucrose solution.  They add/remove scaled amounts of the source of sweetness until it tastes the same as the 2% sucrose solution.  So, in this kind of measurement, it doesn't matter if one person's perception of sweet is different from another person's.  Each person simply compares the taste of the thing to be measured against their perception of sweetness of the 2% sucrose solution.  The "100 times sweeter" rating is then arrived at through statistical methods.

Like sound, though, the perception of taste is not solely experienced by the tongue.  Deaf people can perceive sound through touch, for example.  Taste can also be perceived through smell and vision.  In culinary arts, smell and visual perception is just as important as the sensation experienced by the tongue to produce the desired taste.

 

[Fether]

On 4/17/2017 at 0:41 PM, Carborendum said:

A while ago I was sitting in a training meeting about the dangers of H2S.  It is the 2nd or 3rd most deadly naturally occurring toxins on earth.  We notice it most predominantly by smell.  It is the rotten egg smell that we smell with spoiling foods.  And contrary to Wikipedia and common belief, it is most common in the food processing industry as opposed to the oil & gas industry.

The instructor noted that while there is a detectable smell at 5 ppm (parts per million) or less, our smell is deadened at around 100 ppm.  He began giving a rant stating that it still smells.  You just can't smell it because your nerves are dead.  After he repeated that same line of reasoning in three different ways, the class was silent.  I then interjected,"So, if a tree falls in the forest."  Hillarity ensued.

So, now that I've covered smell and hearing, I just heard something rather odd.  Taste.

Apparently, my son ffenix came across an article that stated that there was a plant that was actually 100 times sweeter than sugar. But we humans simply can't taste it, so it can't be used as a sweetener.  Now this one had me really puzzled.  How???

With smell, if you sense of smell is deadened, that's fine.  But you can still smell it at other concentrations were our sense is not deadened.

With sound, you're not around, then you can't hear it.  You may say it is "blocked" by distance in the case of the tree in the forest.  But as you get close enough, you can hear it.

With light, there are frequencies that are not detectable to the human eye.  But we have instruments that detect electromagnetic radiation at all sorts of frequencies.

With taste, what is the deal?  What method is there to detect taste other than our tongue?

OK, now that we have an explanation, I guess we can move on.  Not really.  This doesn't really explain the statement made earlier.

To help my son with this explanation, I gave the tree analogy which he was familiar with.  It's a question of definition.  If we define sound as "what we hear", then no it does not make a sound.  Because no one heard it.  But if we define it as "the propagation of wave energy sourced from physical vibration through a physical medium", then we must conclude that the tree did indeed make a sound.

With taste?  What the?

BASIC PHOLOSOPHY JOHN LOCKE CRASH COURSE by Dr. Professor PhD Fether

Primary Qualities: qualities that exist without us around.

- Shape

- Density

- Speed of motion

These qualities are measurable and do not change person to person.

Secondary Qualities: Qualities that require a being to be present.

- Temperature

- Smell

- Taste

- Sound

These vary person to person and change throughout time and space.

Take temperature for example. Put one hand in a fire and the other in a tub of ice. Then put both hands in the same bowl of water. The hand that was in the fire will be cold, and the hand in the ice will be warm. 

These are experiences. When something is "hot", what is really happening is that the molecules are moving so fast and they are destroying the cells in our hand. Our mind sees this and causes the sensation of heat/pain in our hand so we pull our hand away to prevent further damage.

SOUND: For the "tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it" bit, remember that sound is nothing but molecular movement (primary quality). Our ears pick up this movement and the brain turns it into something we can us. Sound is not a thing, but rather something our brains invented to help us survive (secondary quality).

 

TASTE: With taste, it is the same as Sound and temperature. A pizza doesn't "taste good" all by itself. It needs someone to experience it in order for there to be any taste, and even that doesn't suggest it will be good or sweet. It is completely based off of perception. It isn't inheritable good, but requires another to be "good".

As far as the sweetness of an untestable chemical... I have no idea how they measure that x)

 

Edited April 19, 2017 by Fether