Wellness Mama Queen

Taste: it’s what makes eating so enjoyable. For all the pleasure taste brings, the mechanisms behind it are underappreciated. Food goes in the mouth, tastes good (or bad), and then it’s swallowed. The apparent simplicity makes taste a process most people take for granted. Ask any passerby how taste works, and they’ll likely rattle off the basics: taste buds on the tongue pick up sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami flavors. And together these five components create, well, the flavor of food. All of that is perfectly true, but   there’s more to food than meets the tongue. Think of a wine enthusiast sticking their nose into the glass before taking that first sip. Or a picky eater plugging their nose to make unpleasant foods go down easier. As any sommelier or chef can probably tell you, there’s a connection between taste and smell. But how—and why—are taste and smell related? They’re simple questions with complicated answers. Fortunately for you, what follows digs into those questio...

As soon as you get out of bed, your five senses are hard at work. The sunlight coming in through your window,   the smell of breakfast, the sound of your alarm clock. All these moments are the product of your environment, sensory organs, and your brain. The ability to hear, touch, see, taste, and smell is hard-wired into your body. And these five senses allow you to learn and make decisions about the world around you. Now it’s time to learn all about your senses. Purpose of the Five Senses Your senses connect you to your environment. With information gathered by your senses, you can learn and make more informed decisions. Bitter taste, for example, can alert you to potentially harmful foods. Chirps and tweets from birds tell you trees and water are likely close. Sensations are collected by sensory organs and interpreted in the brain. But how does information like texture and light make it to your body’s command center? There is a specialized branch of   the nervous system ...