What are your favourite foods? Do you like pizza, hamburgers, roast pork, or sweet cakes and cookies? Chances are that, whatever you like best, it has a strong taste and a salty, sweet or savoury flavour. People generally like to eat tasty foods, and this can create potential health problems, especially with the consumption of fast or processed food. Fast food traditionally contain a lot of salt or sugar, because this is a cheap way to make food taste good and it encourages people to buy more cookies, chips and soft drinks, for example. However, people are becoming increasingly aware of the danger of an unhealthy diet, and the manufacturers of processed food know that sales will increase if they can advertise that their products have less salt or sugar. They also know that if their product tastes bland or boring, no amount of health benefits will make it a popular choice with consumers, and they will lose money if their product is not popular. However, a new technology is currently being developed that may allow fast food manufacturers to reduce salt and sugar without sacrificing taste.
If you stick out your tongue and look in the mirror, you will see that it is covered with tiny bumps. These bumps are called taste buds and they are the receptors in our skin that allow us to taste different kinds of foods. There are five different taste receptors, for sweet, salty, sour, bitter and savoury flavours. When we are born we have a lot of these on the roof of our mouth as well as on our tongue, but as we get older, we lose taste buds, which is why older people find it harder to taste things. Adults typically have about 10,000 taste buds, but older people may have as few as 5,000. We have more receptors for bitter tastes than for any others; researchers think that this may be because these taste buds warn us if food is poisonous.
The food that we eat contains natural chemicals that fit into the different shaped receptors on our tongues; for example, sweet foods trigger the sweet receptors. The technology to mimic, or copy these natural flavours with chemicals such as aspartame has been in existence for a long time, and aspartame is a common ingredient in many diet soft drinks and other diet products. While aspartame allows us to experience a sweet taste without eating sugar, it also has disadvantages. Firstly, many people do not like its bitter aftertaste, and secondly, some people say that it is bad for health if taken in large quantities.
However, a new technology is being developed that may be an improvement on artificial sweeteners and other chemicals. Taste enhancers target the taste receptors on our tongues, and they make us more sensitive to sweet, sour or salty tastes. Just a few molecules of a taste enhancer could double the sweetness effect of a teaspoon of sugar, or the salty effect of a teaspoon of salt. This means that instead of using artificial chemicals to make food tasty, food manufacturers could use half the quantity of the real substance and a tiny quantity of taste enhancer to make the food taste good. This has the potential to save food manufacturers money, by replacing large quantities of sugar and salt with tiny amounts of chemicals. It could benefit our health if we can eat food that tastes good and is low in sugar and salt.
Taste enhancers have other advantages, too. People generally do not like bitter tasting food, but reversing this technology so that the bitter taste receptors are blocked instead of stimulated may reduce the bitter taste of some healthy foods. This means, for example, that people may be persuaded to eat more soy protein.
Taste enhancer technology is very new to the marketplace, and as yet it is not widely used, but it has the potential to make a significant change to the processed food industry, and to improve the healthiness of many fast foods.
Look at the sentences below. Decide if they are facts or opinions.
a. The human mouth has approximately 10,000 taste buds.
b. Research has shown that, in taste tests, most people prefer sweet food.
c. Sweet food is nicer than salty food.
d. Most food manufacturers care more about profits than the health benefits of their product.
e. New food technology can help food to taste better using 50% less salt and fat.
f. New food technology has more drawbacks than advantages.
True or False or Not given
1. Consumers are happy to buy healthy food even if it tastes bland or boring
2. Taste buds enable the body to taste foods of many flavours.
3. Younger people can taste more flavours than older people.
4. Bitter taste buds are more uncommon than other taste buds.
5. Aspartame is a chemical produced in large quantities in the USA.
6. Artificial sweeteners and other chemicals cause tooth decay.
7. Taste enhancers may be better for our health than aspartame.
8. Soy protein is an example of a bitter tasting food.
Use the clues in the sentences to guess the meaning. DO NOT use dictionaries.
a. There are five different taste receptors, or taste buds, on the human tongue.
I. flowers II. cells III. Buds IV. Radios
b. The technology to mimic, or copy, these flavours has been in existence for a long time.
I. photocopy II. make the same
III. make different IV. to be impolite
c. People generally don't like bitter food but the bitter taste buds can be blocked so that food tastes less bitter.
I. opened up II. closed down
III. made like salt IV. made like lemon
d. Sweet and savoury taste buds can be stimulated so that food tastes even better.
I. closed down II. dangerous
III. developed less IV. developed more
e. With this new technology, we no longer need to use artificial or industrially produced chemicals to make food tasty.
I. healthy II. unnatural
III. natural IV. Interesting
f. Bitter taste buds warn us that food is dangerous for us to eat and could be poisonous.
I. very sweet II. makes us sick or even die
III. medicine IV. healthy
g. Taste enhancers make the sweet, salty or sour tastes even better.
I. flowers II. flavours
III. improvers IV. people who taste food for a job
h. When we eat sweet food we stimulate the sweet taste buds, in other words, sweet food triggers the sweet receptors.
I. makes our teeth bad II. uses a gun
III. makes them work more IV. makes them work less
