How does one taste flavor in Food?
The taste of food is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and savory (umami) – the basic tastes – the smells of a food are potentially limitless. A food’s flavor, therefore, can be easily altered by changing its smell while keeping its taste similar. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in artificially flavored jellies, soft drinks and candies, which, while made of bases with a similar taste, have dramatically different flavors due to the use of different scents or fragrances.
At the receptor levels, taste is received by taste buds in the tongue while smell by the olfactory opithelium in the upper part of the nose. Should you have a cold and have a plugged nose, you will not experience flavors.
