How Sweet! (Sweetness Lab)
We tried to answered how does the structure of a carbohydrates affect its taste (sweetness). The structures include monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides. I think that the less rings the sugar has, the more sweetness it has. That would mean that monosaccharides would be the sweetest carbohydrate and polysaccharides would not be sweet to eat. Our group had hypothesized that sucrose, glucose, fructose, and lactose would taste sweet, while galactose, maltose, starch, and cellulose would not taste sweet. We tried the different types of carbohydrates and I concluded that starch and cellulose were polysaccharides due to its unpleasant taste. Then we tried fructose, which was cloyingly sweet. From this evidence, monosaccharides are the sweetest, disaccharides would rank number two, and leaving polysaccharides in last place regarding sweetest.
As I stated, the less rings the sugar has, the sweeter it would taste. The more rings these carbohydrates have means that it would be more dense. The cell or organism using the carbohydrates has to break down the rings, depending on how many rings it holds, it would take longer for the body to process.
We all had different ratings to each sample. One reason why we had different results is that we all have different amounts of taste buds. The more you have, the more sensitive you are to different tastes. I believe that I have very few taste buds because my ratings were drastically different than theirs. The food we had that morning could had also impacted our answers. A cleansed palette should have been idea for this lab, and we could have taken sips of water in between tests. Lastly, our brains detect different molecules. Although our brains can recognize the standard tastes, food chemicals can trigger those signals to vary from one person to another.
When you taste a sweet substance, it imitates the protein on the middle of your taste buds, called taste cells. Each taste bud contains about fifty to a hundred taste cells, which a quarter of them are responsive to sweet flavors. Depending on the amount of taste buds you have, or the amount of taste cells that are contained in the taste buds, your taste of sweetness is very different compared to others.
As I stated, the less rings the sugar has, the sweeter it would taste. The more rings these carbohydrates have means that it would be more dense. The cell or organism using the carbohydrates has to break down the rings, depending on how many rings it holds, it would take longer for the body to process.
We all had different ratings to each sample. One reason why we had different results is that we all have different amounts of taste buds. The more you have, the more sensitive you are to different tastes. I believe that I have very few taste buds because my ratings were drastically different than theirs. The food we had that morning could had also impacted our answers. A cleansed palette should have been idea for this lab, and we could have taken sips of water in between tests. Lastly, our brains detect different molecules. Although our brains can recognize the standard tastes, food chemicals can trigger those signals to vary from one person to another.
When you taste a sweet substance, it imitates the protein on the middle of your taste buds, called taste cells. Each taste bud contains about fifty to a hundred taste cells, which a quarter of them are responsive to sweet flavors. Depending on the amount of taste buds you have, or the amount of taste cells that are contained in the taste buds, your taste of sweetness is very different compared to others.
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