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KCould it be that in elementary school, maybe middle school, you had to try to gently drip a sugar solution onto different parts of your tongue? Maybe it was also the case that you then followed with a salty, sour and bitter taste? The idea was to create a map of where we can feel the four basic flavors on the tongue. The sweetness would be felt at the front of the tip of the tongue, the salinity on the side, the acidity a little further back, and the bitterness at the back of the base of the tongue. The beauty of the experiment is that it is easy to perform, it is harmless, and it includes yourself, which leads to better care. There are really only two problems with this classic experiment: there are no flavor zones, and the number of basic flavors is not four.
Before we see how primary school students around the world are looking for taste zones in the language, I have a confession to make. I too have fallen in love, and what is worse, I helped spread the myth of the taste map of the tongue. Science is about establishing hypotheses that are then tested and questioned. Of course, this is especially important in textbooks, and in the case of the taste zones of the tongue, it’s easy to control, and when I think about the high school experiment, I can’t remember that I could actually feel differences important. However, I included the taste map in a textbook because it was expected to be included.
