Topic summary
Basic tastes
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Taste.
Basic tastes
The gustatory system allows animals to distinguish between safe and harmful food and to gauge different foods' nutritional value. Digestive enzymes in saliva begin to dissolve food into base chemicals that are washed over the papillae and detected as tastes by the taste buds. The tongue is covered with thousands of small bumps called papillae, which are visible to the naked eye. Within each papilla are hundreds of taste buds. The exception to this are the filiform papillae, which do not contain taste buds. There are between 2,000 and 5,000 taste buds that are located on the back and front of the tongue. Others are located on the roof, sides and back of the mouth, and in the throat. Each taste bud contains 50 to 100 taste-receptor cells.