Scientists at the American Chemical Society (ACS) have finally come up with an explanation for why certain food and drinks taste so weird when you consume them right after you brush your teeth. Toothpaste contains an ingredient that briefly alters the way a person tastes sweet foods. Our taste buds, each of which contain 100 taste receptor cells, are designed to recognize five tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami (meaty taste). The taste receptor on the receptor cells can only match with food molecules that are specifically shaped to fit with that receptor. Nonfood molecules, like the ingredient found in toothpaste, may inhibit this matching process. Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) is the ingredient in toothpaste that produces the foam that forms when you brush our teeth. This chemical obstructs the tongue’s receptors responsible for sweetness and destroys the phospholipids that are supposed to block the bitterness receptors. This results in a decline in sweetness receptors and an increase in bitterness receptors, which makes sweet drinks like orange juice taste so bad.
Submitted by: Kendra Schafer
I found this article very interesting because it was such a relatable topic. We complain often that after brushing our teeth, we are unable to consume food afterwards because of the taste. Little did I know that this was because a very particular ingredient in toothpaste. I wonder why this specific ingredient in toothpaste is necessary but I find it fascinating how it is able to alter our taste buds for a period of time. Do we actually need an ingredient in our toothpaste to make a foam substance? I suppose we would need to look into what is most effective in regard to teeth cleaning if we were to alter the ingredients in toothpaste.
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