To Be Sweet or Not to Be Sweet Lab

In this lab, I tasted different types of carbohydrates: sucrose, glucose, fructose, galactose, maltose, lactose, starch, and cellulose to determine each one's sweetness. Through this lab, I found that the number of rings in a carbohydrate corresponds to the sweetness of the carbohydrate. For example, cellulose and starch formed long chains and were the least sweet while glucose and fructose, which each had only one ring, were the sweeter. Where these carbohydrates are naturally found also relates to its sweetness. Since cellulose is found in vegetables as a major energy source, and most vegetables are not sweet, it makes sense that cellulose would not be very sweet either. On the other hand, fructose is found in fruits, which are supposed to be bait for animals to eat their fruit and spread the seeds, logically, fructose would be sweet. It was! Turns out, the way that humans taste sweetness is through taste cells on taste buds on a person's tongue (NPR). The way that people normally taste is different from the way that our body senses sweet tastes. We actually have sweet receptor proteins in our taste cells which go on to send certain signals to our nervous system and brain. What has been recently discovered a few years ago is that other organs in our body can sense sweetness as well. However, back to the tongue and its taste buds. They have gustatory receptor cells which go on to send signals to the brain (How Stuff Works). These receptor cells are what determine how your brain will react to those flavors. This is a factor in how each person senses different tastes and the extent of how sweet, sour, or bitter it is to them.


Fun Fact: Your taste cells have a lifespan of around 10 days