Tasty New Diet Food
I love a weird factoid, so here's another.
Okay, you can taste carbon dioxide.
Yeah, I had the same reaction. I mean, that can't be right, can it? I have no idea what CO2 tastes like.
According to Science of 16 October, the thought for years was that the tingly mouth sensation of drinking soda, champagne, beer was caused solely by the micro-bubbles (and regular sized bubbles) of CO2 coming of solution, bursting on your tongue, and the mechanoreceptors reporting the motion to your brain.
That is part of the sensation, but if you drink beer, soda or champagne while on the drug acetazolamide, they taste flat, as if the carbonation had been lost. Acetazolamide inhibits, among other enzymes, carbonic anhydrase 4 in the sourness receptors on your tongue. Carbonic anhydrase breaks down CO2 into bicarbonate and free protons, which then registers as the "taste" of carbonation.
So why doesn't everything carbonated taste sour, since the sourness receptors are the ones that fire in the presence of CO2? They don't know, according to the article.
I'm not sure I believe it yet, but I am enjoying the thought.
Okay, you can taste carbon dioxide.
Yeah, I had the same reaction. I mean, that can't be right, can it? I have no idea what CO2 tastes like.
According to Science of 16 October, the thought for years was that the tingly mouth sensation of drinking soda, champagne, beer was caused solely by the micro-bubbles (and regular sized bubbles) of CO2 coming of solution, bursting on your tongue, and the mechanoreceptors reporting the motion to your brain.
That is part of the sensation, but if you drink beer, soda or champagne while on the drug acetazolamide, they taste flat, as if the carbonation had been lost. Acetazolamide inhibits, among other enzymes, carbonic anhydrase 4 in the sourness receptors on your tongue. Carbonic anhydrase breaks down CO2 into bicarbonate and free protons, which then registers as the "taste" of carbonation.
So why doesn't everything carbonated taste sour, since the sourness receptors are the ones that fire in the presence of CO2? They don't know, according to the article.
I'm not sure I believe it yet, but I am enjoying the thought.