Treats and Tricks: The Magic World of Sweetness

Taste is one of the five senses, together with sight, hearing, smell, and touch. Food contains small particles, molecules, that enter the mouth and are captured by receptors on the tongue, which then tell the brain that their taste is sweet, bitter, sour, salty, or umami (brothy or meaty). Sweet is the taste people prefer, by far. There are thousands of different substances that taste sweet, not only sugar, but many other chemicals, including a few sweet proteins. When the receptor “eats” the sweet molecule, the receptor changes shape and sends a signal inside the cell. Some sweet molecules are really big proteins that cannot enter the cavities of the receptor, but they can also bind to the receptor by hugging it from the outside.