(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)

For many years, we have been taught that our tongue has 4 main areas, detecting different tastes. This is called the tongue map.

Some scientists did research to find that this was not entirely true.

They found out that all tastes can be experienced on all parts of the tongue. The difference is in the intensity of the taste detected. One way to prove this is to put salt at the tip of your tongue. According to the tongue map, it can only taste sweet. However, the tip of the tongue can also taste salt!

So how does our tongue taste?

In fact, all tastes can be detected on all parts of the tongue that has tongue receptors. Research has also shown that taste bud contains 50 to 100 taste receptors for each taste. Only the intensity of each taste differs.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)

Then, what is a taste bud? These are sensory organs found on our tongue that allows us to detect tastes that are sweet, salty, sour and bitter. The average person has about 10,000 taste buds. These taste buds are replaced every 2 weeks or so. As you grow older, not all the taste buds are replaced. Therefore some food will taste stronger to a child compared to an adult.