Today in Biology class, we did the sweetness lab. It consisted of several different sugars, and we judged which ones were sweet and which ones weren't. We were trying to answer the question " How does the structure of a Carbohydrate affect its taste (sweetness)?". And the answer was simple: Monosaccharides were the sweetest sugar because they only have one sugar ring. Disaccharides, which have two sugar rings, were less sweet than Monosaccharides but are still pretty sweet. And then Polysaccharides were the most bitter sugars, because they consisted of three or more rings.
I was working with one other person, and we both had close to the same rating for the sweetness of all the sugars. Even though we might have been close when it came to rating, there were still other reasons for us being a little off. One of the reasons could have been that we had a different amount of sugar, which could have caused different results. Also, our opinions all vary. I could give frutose a ninety, but my partner only give it a seventy-five. It just depends on our opinions. The last reason would be our taste-buds, our taste buds are all different and that could be the big reason for different answers.
NPR interviewed Dr. Robert Margolskee, a molecular neurobiologist, and talked all about the taste buds. He said that "Taste buds aren't the ones that tell your brain that something is sweet, it is the taste cells that are inside the taste bud that do all the tasting". This means that it isn't our taste buds, but the smaller taste cells (which we probably have a lot more of) that taste stuff for us and tell us what we like or not.
So overall, the experiment went good in my opinion, with some ups and downs. But it was good and I learned a lot about sugars and how they work.
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