Feb. 15, 2006

Bad Taste Genes

You may be able to change the way orange juice tastes just by brushing your teeth.

You will need:

• toothpaste containing sodium lauryl sulfate
• a toothbrush
• a small glass of orange juice

First take a sip of orange juice and notice its flavor. Rinse your mouth with water. Brush your teeth for at least sixty seconds with a toothpaste containing sodium lauryl sulfate. Rinse with water and taste the juice again. Does it have a different flavor?

One out of three people does not detect any difference. The others do. And it's mouth puckering. Yuck!

Insider Information

The tongue is equipped with taste buds that can detect four basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Sodium lauryl sulfate is a detergent often found in toothpaste, mouthwash, and laundry products. This harmless chemical can alter the taste of the citric acid in orange juice. The sourness is almost unchanged, but the bitterness is almost ten times stronger.

Your ability to taste bitterness in other substances is inherited as well. If both of your parents gave you the bitterness-detecting gene, then caffeine, the food preservative sodium benzoate, tonic water, and certain artificial sweeteners have an especially bitter flavor. If only one parent gave you the gene, you can detect a bitter taste, but it won't be unpleasant. If you didn't get the gene, you might not be able to identify bitterness at all.

Reprinted with permission from You Gotta Try This! Absolutely Irresistible Science by Vicki Cobb (www.vickicobb.com) and Kathy Darling. Text copyright © 1999 by Vicki Cobb and Kathy Darling. Published by William Morrow and Company, Inc.

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