The map that carves the tongue into sweet, sour, salty and bitter zones is a misreading of a 1901 translation: every region with taste buds senses all five tastes, differing only slightly in threshold. A substance dissolves in saliva, passes the taste pore and triggers the receptors inside a bud; we each carry some 5,000 to 10,000 buds, renewed every 10 to 14 days. Spiciness stands outside those five altogether, because heat is not a taste: capsaicin fires the TRPV1 pain-and-heat receptor.
The map that carves the tongue into sweet, sour, salty and bitter zones is a misreading of a 1901 translation: every region with taste buds senses all five tastes, differing only slightly in threshold. A substance dissolves in saliva, passes the taste pore and triggers the receptors inside a bud; we each carry some 5,000 to 10,000 buds, renewed every 10 to 14 days. Spiciness stands outside those five altogether, because heat is not a taste: capsaicin fires the TRPV1 pain-and-heat receptor.
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