taste

[boobesque]

why is it when you have a blocked nose or you hold your nose, that you cant taste your food properly?

[gen2]

To a scientist, taste is the sense detected by tastebuds on the tongue.  In humans these have traditionally comprised sweet, salt, sour and bitter.  Recently, some scientists have postulated a fifth taste for glutamate.  All true tastes are made up of combinations of these.

However, what we subjectively call 'taste' is more than that and includes texture and aroma. Texture is derived from touch and pressure sensors in and around the mouth.  The aroma is from molecules entering the nasal cavity from the throat and stimulating the smell sense organs in the nose.  The sense of smell is not as limited as the sense of taste and contributes a great deal to what we call 'taste'.

Blocking the nose prevents a flow of air from bringing molecules to the smell sense organ so that contribution is cut off.  All you are left with is the texture and the true taste (sweet, salt, sour and bitter) so your food doesn't taste anywhere near as good as you remember or expect.

One advantage is that it then enables you to swallow bad tasting medicines.

[Peter Pedant]

God that's  a long answer Boobs!

You need your nose to 'taste' properly, so when you have a cold, a lot of the 'taste' goes out of the food and this is the same effect.

people without smell have a hell of a time eating because it all seems a bit like boiled blotting paper apparently......

[magicdice]

i guess everything'd taste like chicken...

a mildly interesting aside: apparently we don't remember tastes, only smells.

[PatTheRat]

buy 2 packets of crisps. one packet of cheese and onion to eat, one packet of salt and vinegar to smell.

put some cheese and onion in your mouth, and at the same time put some salt and vinegar by your nose and sniff.

It tastes like you are eating salt and vinegar. Well, kind of.