We have two separate salt-taste systems

https://nautil.us/salt-taste-is-surprisingly-mysterious-382855/

by Tomte • 3 years ago

52 57 3 years ago

nautil.us

r0m4n0• 3 years ago

Also, salt is the only mineral humans consume in raw form!

badtension• 3 years ago

What about iodine?

ComputerGuru2• 3 years ago

You’re right.. with the added bonus of most people getting their iodine through their salt, anyway!

cwillu• 3 years ago

Lucky iron fish: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish

sp332• 3 years ago

Those aren't raw, they're cooked.

freitzkriesler2• 3 years ago

I always wondered if it is the sodium or the chlorine that triggers the flavor. Unfortunately licking raw sodium would explode and elemental chlorine is a gas that burns ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

Synaesthesia2• 3 years ago

Ions are very different to the atomic form. For instance copper is the familiar red-brown metal. Cu2+ ions though, are blue and dissolve in water. Clearly they are entirely different species.

hinkley7• 3 years ago

Potassium chloride tastes a lot like salt, but not exactly. Which I think means that it's some sort of 80/20 ratio.

Also one of my favorite science thought experiments from the last few years: What ~~does hydrogen~~ do protons taste like?

stouset• 3 years ago

Hydrogen ions. More specifically, protons.

Spoiler (rot13): Lbhe fbhe erprcgbef qrgrpg npvqf. Npvqf ner zbyrphyrf juvpu unir serr cbfvgvir ulqebtra vbaf (nxn cebgbaf). Cebgbaf gnfgr fbhe.

Traubenfuchs3• 3 years ago

Potassium chloride tastes a lot like salt

Not at all, it‘s disgusting. The idea of replacing NaCl with it is laughable.

Traubenfuchs3• 3 years ago

I don‘t think that question makes sense. This is like asking whether the H or the O makes water wet: It‘s the combination.

MostlyStable2• 3 years ago

Except that NaCl dissolves into sodium and chloride ions in water. in any context in which you are actually tasting it, you are not tasting NaCl, you are tasting some combination of Na+ and Cl-, at which point, asking which (if either) is the one driving the experience.

janci• 3 years ago

Somebody tried to find out: https://youtu.be/RJh9yTIBY48?si=7YWV6WbZ3mAWE0Si

fellowmartian• 3 years ago

It’s not just somebody, it’s Tom from Explosions&Fire! He’s an absolute legend.

twic2• 3 years ago

Both. That horrible Finnish salty liquorice is made salty by the addition of ammonium chloride, which has no sodium. Sodium acetate and sodium glutamate taste salty, despite having no chloride in.

My speculative guess would be that the salt sensor just senses ionic strength, so any substance which readily splits into ions will taste salty.

(obviously i wrote this comment before reading the article, which talks about all this stuff in modest detail!)

Synaesthesia2• 3 years ago

Still kinda disturbs me that scientists will routinely do some kind of genetic or other biological modification of say, a mouse, and then when the results are in, simply kill the animal and dispose of it.

ChatGTP2• 3 years ago

This is why we worry about robot take over, it’s because we’re assholes, we worry we’ll create bigger, better assholes.

hinkley7• 3 years ago

We talk about which scientists we should put in charge of AI and I think that's all wrong. The self-preserving question is which philosophers should we put in charge? And which group of developmental psychologists should be auditing their work?

Teach

your children well

Their father's hell did slowly go by

Feed them on your dreams

The one they pick's the one you'll know by

...

And know they love you

satvikpendem2• 3 years ago

What else can they do with them?

twic2• 3 years ago

Counterpoint: people who aren't scientists kill animals all the time, and don't even genetically engineer them first.

hinkley7• 3 years ago

But the real number is actually six, because we have two separate salt-taste systems. One of them detects the attractive, relatively low levels of salt that make potato chips taste delicious. The other one registers high levels of salt—enough to make overly salted food offensive and deter overconsumption.

I can imagine a future scenario where, in the interests of public health, someone figures out how to transliterate the 'too much salt' genes to 'too much sugar' genes.

Of the various ways that I could see human augmentation play out for the better rather than the worse, I'd rank that right behind tetrachromacy and hypoxia genes (particularly for Martians and Lunatics)

koolba• 3 years ago

I can imagine a future scenario where, in the interests of public health, someone figures out how to transliterate the 'too much salt' genes to 'too much sugar' genes.

Doing it for the masses “for their own good” is quite dystopian. But doing it for yourself is easy and no gene therapy is required. Just cut out sweet foods and after not too long normal foods like bread will taste sweet, and sweetened foods will taste unnaturally toxic.

MostlyStable2• 3 years ago

"simple" and "easy" are very much not the same thing.

OJFord2• 3 years ago

Just cut out sweet foods and after not too long normal foods like bread will taste sweet

I don't really eat (or drink) that much sweet stuff at all, but I assume this is not-great industrial-scale bread you're talking about - with sugar added, not just a little salt, as a preservative; or for a shiny glazing.

There's no sugar in the regular bread I bake every few days/week, and unsurprisingly it doesn't taste sweet.

I really don't think any less sugar in my diet would change that (I'm not 'cutting' it, I just don't at all often have pudding, never sugar in my coffee, etc. I'd have to drop chutneys, fruit, wine to have much less).

satvikpendem2• 3 years ago

One must be careful when editing the germ line. Imagine that your gene changes were propagated but a disaster befalls the planet such that calories are now scarce as had been dozens of millennia ago. Those who couldn't eat enough food or consume enough sugar-based calories could die out, and if there are enough of those kinds of people among the population, the population size could reduce significantly.

hinkley7• 3 years ago

but a disaster befalls the planet such that calories are now scarce as had been dozens of millennia ago
the population size could reduce significantly

The latter is a foregone conclusion of the former.

elcritch• 3 years ago

Presumably in a post apocalyptic situation survivors wouldn't be surrounded by a glut of processed sugary foods.

crackercrews2• 3 years ago

I can imagine a future scenario where, in the interests of public health, someone figures out how to transliterate the 'too much salt' genes to 'too much sugar' genes.

This has already been contemplated as a way to reduce consumption of red meat. [1] Just make people allergic to it. All in the name of fighting global warming of course.

1: https://twitter.com/bitcoinorthobro/status/14072586753587159...

josephcsible• 3 years ago

tl;dw: crazy person wants to intentionally give the entire human population alpha-gal syndrome.

hinkley7• 3 years ago

That’s the most PETA thing I’ve heard in about forever.

thanhhaimai• 3 years ago

I don't think the "too much sugar" crisis in the US is due to people cannot feel there is too much sugar. It's just overly sweet food is the default in so many parts of the US. Ice cream here is much sweeter than in Asia. Cup cakes in the US can send me straight to sugar coma after just one bite.

When I asked a friend if they thought the cup cake was sweet. They said that isn't cup cake supposed to be sweet? And they don't think it's overly sweet since all the cup cakes they have had were like that.

kazinator• 3 years ago

Sour is slightly different: It is detected by taste bud cells that respond to acidity, researchers recently learned.

Recently? Come, now.

If an animal takes in too much salt, the body tries to compensate, holding on to water so the blood won’t be overly salty. In many people, that extra fluid volume raises blood pressure. The excess fluid puts strain on the arteries; over time, it can damage them and create the conditions for heart disease or stroke.

This flawed narrative was debunked years ago.

The correct one is something like this: the body can get used to a wide range of sodium intakes. Sodium-following fluid movement is temporary effect. Only certain individuals have a sensitivity linking blood pressure and sodium.

AnonHP2• 3 years ago

Is the blood pressure increase (with increase in sodium intake) temporary, which implies that the body gets used to the increased sodium and blood pressure drops back to some average/normal level after days or weeks of the new intakes?

If yes, why is it that a very common advice from doctors and all kinds of “health information sites” is to cut salt and sodium to manage or reduce high blood pressure? Is the sensitivity to sodium not easy to detect or is it actually more prevalent in the population?

yurishimo• 3 years ago

It you eat a ton of salt, it’s likely that the source is food that isn’t healthy for you to begin with. It’s near impossible for you to overeat on salty broccoli, but most adults could easily eat an entire bag of potato chips because processed food has much less fiber and protein which are the main drivers for feeling full.

mech765• 3 years ago

If I do a lot of exercise on a hot day, I can come back to the house and eat a can of anchovies and still want more salt. I wish I could uh, know how healthy this is

We have two separate salt-taste systems

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