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The Truth About Taste
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
Busted! This diagram is wrong! Each taste bud on your tongue can detect all five flavors.
It’s common for diagrams of the tongue to show it divided into sections, each labeled with the single flavor that part of the tongue can sense. But this “taste map” is totally wrong. This myth—which has been around since 1901—persists even after having been debunked in 1974. In reality, taste is far more complex. Your tongue is covered in taste buds. These tiny bumps can sense all five flavors—sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (savory)—no matter their location. See for yourself, says Tom Finger, a biologist at the University of Colorado Boulder: Put some ice cream on the back of your tongue, which supposedly detects bitter flavors. “You’ll go, ‘Yeah, it’s sweet!’”