taste Buds
How do you navigate food?
When I searched for images of tongues, how come the first several pages all came up with dog tongues? I tried taste buds but came up with mostly food items, not pictures of the human taste buds even though that is how we evaluate our food. Do we not think about our taste buds? And it is interesting that dog tongues come up first, since from having dogs and seeing what they eat, I often wonder what shape their taste buds are in.
There are 5 basic tastes — salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and savory — consisting of 10–50 sensory cells, of which adults have between 2.000 and 10,000 buds. They allow us to sense all sorts of flavors. But everyone has a different palette — selection of flavors they like and dislike.
Get bob king’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
When I was a child, my taste buds got assaulted by a few things I did not like. I did not have a choice because family rules dictated that you had to take a little bit of everything that was served, and you had to finish everything on your plate before you could have dessert. The reason was that my parents had grown up during the Great Depression and reasoned that you did not waste food, and that with time, children would learn to like anything. They also reasoned that if you had room for dessert, you had room to finish your plate. There were many nights when I endured extra time at the table finishing my plate so i could have dessert. We always had dessert, and it was always good.
After childhood, I not only did not have to endure certain foods (beets, lima beans, stewed tomatoes, and sweet potatoes/yams), but I was free to explore other new foods to expand my palate. Some of those included calamari (squid), kimchi, and sauerkraut. I liked those. I also tried some other foods just on a whim, which I did not — including chicken feet, Turkish coffee, and limburger cheese.
I have encountered others whose taste buds operated differently. My last roommate before I got married didn’t like much vegetables — including the onions I sauteed for my spaghetti — and most seafood. I on the other hand enjoy most vegetables and all seafood except anchovies (even on pizza).
Fortunately, my wife and I share many of the same tastes, likes, and dislikes — so cooking is easy. My grandmother got to a point where her sense of smell was damaged, so, as my mom told it, if she didn’t look at it, she could not tell the difference between onions and strawberries. A sad tale indeed.
I am always curious and eager to try new things. Some work and others don’t, but I do love the adventure of discovery. I love coffee, which was a journey, and I never take it black. My next experiment may be macha — I’ll let you know how it works out.
