How do we perceive tastes and smells? How are taste and smell
connected to communication? Peggy and David seek out a
connection between our senses of taste and smell. Have you ever
wondered why food loses its flavor when you have a cold? It’s
not your taste buds’ fault. Blame your stuffed-up nose. Seventy
to seventy-five percent of what we perceive as taste actually
comes from our sense of smell. Taste buds allow us to perceive
only bitter, salty, sweet, and sour flavors. It’s the odor
molecules from food that give us most of our taste sensation.
When you put food in your mouth, odor molecules from that food
travel through the passage between your nose and mouth to
olfactory receptor cells at the top of your nasal cavity, just
beneath the brain and behind the bridge of the nose. If mucus in
your nasal passages becomes too thick, air and odor molecules
can’t reach your olfactory receptor cells. Thus, your brain
receives no signal identifying the odor, and everything you eat
tastes much the same. You can feel t