Taste Expert Answers Questions From Twitter

I'm Beth Kimmerle.

I'm an author and taste expert.

Today, I'm answering your questions from Twitter.

Welcome to Taste Support.

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First up, @alloutofcoffee asks,

Can someone please explain

to me the difference between tart and sour taste?

Here's something for you. They're the same.

But in the professional tasting industry,

we use the term sour, but we don't just use sour.

We use the terms, lactic sour, basic sour, or acetic sour.

Acetic sour is the type of sour that you're getting

from things like vinegar.

Lactic sour is the type of sour that you're getting

from things like buttermilk or yogurt.

And basic sour, that is the sour of citric acid

or something citrus on your mouth.

This is from Eileen Tyrrell, and she's asking,

Could someone please explain to me the science

of why blue raspberry is by far the best fruit flavor

even though blue raspberry isn't even real?

So in the food industry,

a flavor house is where product developers

and food scientists go to source flavors.

Sometimes they go to a flavor house and say,

Hey, I want an orange, but I want it to be more

of a mandarin orange and it needs to be cooked

and at this level of sweet and this level of sour.

Sometimes the flavor house has a library

of flavors that you can choose from.

So blue raspberry might have been one

of those wacky flavors at the flavor house developed

or came from the mind of a scientist.

If you try blue raspberry, I'm not sure about this,

but I almost wonder if somebody took raspberry

and combined it with grape.

All right, so we have a question from @Dyonnce.

Does anyone have remedies for bringing taste and smell back

to a 100% after COVID?

Crying face.

It's been almost a year, and I'm still suffering.

One of the things that you can do is practice.

You can get yourself some essential oils

in a range of different flavors.

And what you're gonna do is just pass them under your nose.

Just take a little bunny sniff, not too much.

And then you're gonna tell yourself,

Okay, that's lemongrass.

What's gonna happen is, slowly but surely,

you're gonna trigger your memory and your brain

to sort of remember what that was.

Here's the thing. It will come back.

A lot of people have had sort of phantom smells

or weird smells as a result of COVID.

But we're now seeing that that in time goes away,

and you can train yourself to come back a little bit faster.

All right, we've got a question from @rooshibi.

I ate so much sour candy that my tongue is raw,

and it hurts now.

I love sour candy so much.

Why did it have to betray me like this?

I feel your pain.

But on the outside of sour candy

is something called citric acid.

And it's those little crystals,

when you have something sour,

that get into your, literally, papillae, your tongue, right?

It can eat away at the roof of your mouth.

It can eat away at your tongue.

So whatever sour candy you're eating,

it might be a little extreme.

All right, next question.

And this is from @Super70sSports.

I don't know what Sharkleberry Fin is,

but one thing I know, it is definitely not a [beep] flavor.

And @Super70sSports is also including a picture of,

oh my gosh, it's like a classic Kool-Aid pack

with the pitcher guy riding a shark.

At the top, it says Sharkleberry Fin.

It also says it's pink, okay.

So we're getting some clues here.

What flavor would this be?

It is not a flavor.

But this is a way for food companies to own a flavor

'cause I see Sharkleberry Fin TM.

And it looks like this was produced,

I don't know, in the '80s or something.

And so they probably didn't get the memo

that shark fin is illegal, number one.

Number two, I think you do wanna cue your customers

into what flavor this is,

but it's got this wild, devil-may-care packaging.

I think it's like,

Come into this crazy shark world with us.

It is not a flavor,

but it is a way for a food company

to kind of own a concept, right?

Because the three top flavors,

chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry

are kind of out there already.

I don't know what Sharkleberry Fin is,

but one thing I know it's definitely not a [beep] flavor.

This is from @doingittoem. This is great.

I want chicken nuggets so bad.

Oh, PS, this is all in caps.

So bad.

Dude, why is McDonald's so good but also so terrible?

Why are they so addicting?

They're so addicting

because they have been formulated in a lab.

This is chicken that's been combined with potato

and other ingredients,

so it can be formed and molded and then breaded and fried.

What the lab has done is to try to modulate the taste

so that it's just the right perfect amount

of sweet and salty and sour and bitter and umami, right?

So those are the five basic tastes.

When you can combine them in just the right way,

foods are addicting.

Like, they can nail it,

and that's why chicken nuggets, oh my gosh,

just the smell makes people cave,

and they go for them.

We have a question from @gripegal.

Explain to me how, with all the science in the world,

the taste of gum only lasts five minutes,

yet the taste of onion lasts 864 hours.

This gum has a coloring system,

a flavoring system, and what's called gum base.

And what happens when you masticate or chew product

is that you're moving through the sweetener system,

and it's basically going into your stomach, right?

So as you move through this, it tastes great.

Some of the sweetening systems will use artificial flavor,

which actually increase over time

and allow you to enjoy gum for a little bit longer.

The other thing about gum and flavor,

some flavors are stronger than others, right?

So if you have gums that have peppermints or mints in them,

those are longer lasting, more robust flavors.

Now, onto onions.

Why does that flavor last so long and linger?

Onions, garlic, they contain sulfur.

And those flavors,

as opposed to just dissolving and going into your stomach,

those flavors actually get into your bloodstream.

And so if you've ever had a large dose of garlic

and then smelled your skin the next day,

you're exuding that garlic flavor.

When you're chewing gum, the flavors are dissolving.

And simply put, they're not going anywhere else

but your stomach.

They're breaking down.

Whereas for onions and garlic,

those flavors are staying in your system,

perhaps for days, depending on how much you ate.

All right, now we have a question from @bkarzucivan.

How does the tongue know different tastes?

People, your tongue has about, give or take,

10,000 taste buds.

Taste buds take in information using these receptors

that's then signaling your brain

what you're about to taste.

And that simple step is really important

so that people don't start ingesting things

that are bad for them.

Back in the day,

scientists thought that your tongue

was divided into sections and that you'd actually have

to taste sweet at the front or sour on the sides.

But we now know that we have these taste receptors,

and they're spread evenly throughout the tongue,

so you're able to taste all five basic tastes

throughout the tongue.

Next up, from @06hondacrv,

Who is the person that created the flavor

of Flamin' Hot Cheetos,

and where can I meet and talk to them?

Guess what? It's not a person.

It's a whole team of people who create flavors.

So it's a marketing team.

It's a science team.

It's a product development team.

And that flavoring could have taken them years to make.

And guess what?

They're not gonna talk to you

because flavors are sort of the secret identity

of foods, right?

There's a reason the recipe for Coca-Cola

is locked up in a safe.

So you might meet one of them, but they've all signed NDAs,

and they're not telling you anything.

All right, so now we have another question from @nowtheo.

And @nowtheo asks a really important question.

What's a supertaster?

The typical tongue has about 10,000 taste buds on it.

And anything over that means you're a super taster, right?

So you've got these extra taste buds.

That means you're taking in way more information about food.

So for instance, if I taste kale, right?

Like a really bitter kale.

That bitter might be- we use scales in sensory evaluation.

So for intensity scales, we use from 1 to 15.

Let's say that kale is at, you know,

a 10 or 11 for me.

For a supertaster, that bitter,

because they have more receptors,

might taste like a 15, all the way at the end of the scale.

So bitter that their gag reflexes kick in.

So there's actually a way to test

if you're a super taster at home.

You just need a few things.

Some food dye, a Q-tip, and a piece of paper

with a standard hole punch in it.

We're gonna bring in Brandon, who's a producer on the set,

to see if he's a super taster.

More than 35 papillae means that Brandon's a supertaster.

I have this Q-tip.

I'm just gonna put a little bit of dye on it.

I'm gonna go right in there.

The next step is going to be

to count exactly how many papillae Brandon has

on his tongue.

Uh huh. Ooh, great shot.

And now I'm gonna count them to see if he's a supertaster.

There's exactly 35,

which is what a typical taster would have.

So Brandon's in the normal range, not quite a supertaster,

but maybe that's for the best.

Next question from @dannyyguerreroo.

Fruity Pebbles are all the same flavor,

yet each one tastes different.

What is the science name for this situation?

Placebo effect?

Good guess, but it's actually not.

The Fruity Pebbles are all the same flavor.

It's probably a combination of fruit.

So it could be cherry, strawberry, grape, let's say.

But the colors are different.

Your mind interprets those or takes that information in

as those being different, different flavors.

A really interesting test was done with wine experts,

and they gave wine experts white wine colored with red dye.

And these experts, every single one of them,

thought that white wine was red wine because of the red dye.

And the interesting thing is we eat with our eyes,

and so we get fooled all the time,

even professional tasters.

Fooling consumers is something

that consumer packaged goods companies have been doing

for a long time.

It's a way of saving costs.

There's a reason Fruity Pebbles

don't have individual flavors.

The other thing is

that flavor does something really interesting.

It's called migration.

So if you had an orange one and a green one,

eventually over time, they'd start tasting all the same.

All right, so @EricScharri asked, How do Pop Rocks work?

There's gas in those little pieces of candy

that is activated when moisture hits them.

The one thing that makes Pop Rocks really interesting

is that it's also textural.

You're actually hearing those popping,

and you're taking in a lot of sensory information

with a Pop Rock.

So it's not just about the flavor.

It's like something's happening.

Really a cool product

in that you're really using all your senses

when you're experiencing a Pop Rock.

And next up, @snot asks,

Why does Sprite from McDonald's taste different

than a Sprite in a bottle?

So the Sprite you're getting from McDonald's is flavoring

and bubbly water that have come together,

likely out of a machine, shh, or a gun, shh.

And Sprite that's in a bottle comes

from a manufacturing plant

and has sort of a different profile packaging.

Whether it's a bottle, a cardboard box, or a film wrapper,

oftentimes have flavors associated with them.

Where do those, you know, flavors and/or aromas come from?

They can come from the inks.

They can come from the plastics.

So one of the sort of misunderstood things

is that Sprite that comes out of a gun

would taste like Sprite in a bottle.

The ingredients in the actual Sprite drink

might be the same,

but the Sprite bottle could have some flavors

that come from the actual packaging.

All right, so we have a question from @itsyagirl_sky.

Alexa, this is in all caps.

How are different flavors of cheese created?

That is an interesting question.

And I am not a cheese maker,

but I will tell you that cheese starts with milk.

They add enzymes that change both the sugars

in the cheese and the proteins.

And over time, those tastes can go

in a lot of different directions,

depending on the type of milk, the type of enzymes.

So cheese is incredibly complex.

I mean, I tasted a cheese with a client the other day,

and it had butter notes, it had citrus notes,

it had umami, it had all different notes in it.

And it's all dependent on how long you let it store,

what type of enzymes, and what type of dairy you use.

And this is from @maxx_attaxx.

Why do they put colors to taste?

Especially when they make pink Starbursts taste

like strawberries.

Effing liars, strawberries aren't pink.

Here's why they put colors to taste.

Our brain is also taking in visual signals

or visual cues from food.

So they put colors to taste to give us the cue

that something is sweet or has a flavor.

If you look at a strawberry Starburst,

it's not red, red, like a strawberry.

It's still kind of, you know, it's still pinkish.

And the reason is they can't load the amount of red

that, you know, would be required

or would match a strawberry in that candy.

That would be a lot of color.

There's also a legacy around red food dye.

Certain food colorings have been tied to,

you know, illnesses.

Back in the day, they took the red M&M out of the M&M pack

because there was legal implications around using red dye.

We have a question from @mattadams95.

I'm confused. What is the flavor of Coca-Cola?

And this is an incredible question

because oftentimes we don't really think

of all the nuanced flavors in Coca-Cola.

So what's in Coca-Cola?

Well, it starts with the kola nut, right?

That's sort of the base flavor.

But then you can have lot of brown spice.

Most of us in the flavor community think there

is a little sarsaparilla in there.

Sarsaparilla is the base for root beer.

And then there's also this, stick with me, fruit flavor.

When you know how to taste,

you can really take Coca-Cola and analyze it

and break out all of the flavors.

It's not just sweet. It's not just kola.

It's a little spicy, it's a little minty,

and it's a little fruity.

So if you've ever had a Coke and a Pepsi and tasted them,

well, the tastes are different.

So the spice levels might be a little bit different.

But one thing's for sure,

the sweet level is vastly different.

Guess which one's sweeter. Pepsi.

We have a question from @ImTheCritic.

How does one even explain

the feeling slash taste of wasabi?

It's not really spicy or sour. It just burns your nose.

Okay, this is actually a really interesting one

because the flavor of wasabi and the spice,

when you're a professional taster,

you can piece those apart.

So the flavor of wasabi,

it's in the mustard family, by the way.

A lot of people liken to horseradish on steroids, right?

'Cause it's spicier than just a regular horseradish.

So a lot of people can explain it by saying

it tastes like horseradish with an increased intensity.

So if horseradish is at a five,

wasabi might be at a 15.

But it also has the taste of a root vegetable

and is in the mustard family.

Finally, we have a question from @arg_imma_pirate.

How do I become a Ben & Jerry's flavor guru?

Okay, great question.

It sounds like maybe you already have some practice

in becoming one.

A lot of people come in to the world of flavor

with a science background.

So that's an option.

You can go in that direction,

or you can get yourself a bunch of pints,

take it slow, do what we call meditative eating,

and do a taste test, right?

Start really tasting what's in there.

And if you can start mapping the taste in Ben & Jerry's,

I don't know, maybe you can get hired as a guru.

A lot of food companies need consumer tasters,

so you can sign up for a consumer taste test

with Ben & Jerry's or an ice cream company to be a taster.

Check that out.

Okay, that's it. We're done with all the questions.

I really hope you guys learned something and had some fun

and until next time.

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