did I go wrong in life? What happened to my tastebuds?

Hey guys, Julia here for DNews.

Right now, there are thousands of tastebuds on your tongue, some estimates say as many

as 10,000. And no you don’t have specific areas of your tongue for certain flavors,

the taste buds are all kind of mixed together.

but when you look at your tongue, those little bumps are little clumps of taste buds,

which each contain 50-100 taste cells, kind of like a head of broccoli.

One study got up close and personal with these miniscule mysteries. Tastebuds look kind of

like little bulbs, little flowers, with receptor cells looking like the petals surrounded by

blood cells which in turn is surrounded by collagen.

These taste cells take chemical signals from the food you eat and send it to taste centers

in your brain. Seriously, there’s a place in your brain just for tasting called the

Gustatory cortex.

Speaking of broccoli though, like when I was little I hated broccoli, like hated it. Now

So anyways, have my taste buds changed as I grew up? Well yeah, kind of. It’s no secret

kids like sweet things. But maybe it’s biology. One study published in the journal Physiology

Behavior, found that growing bones release hormones that cause children to crave the

sweets. That way their growing body get the energy it needs. The researchers also found

that that in people whose bones stopped growing, they had less of those hormones. So maybe

that’s why adults find overly sweet things sickening and prefer other flavors like delicious

bitter broccoli.

As for your actual taste buds, well the cells in your tastebuds don't last for long, they

change all the time. The average lifespan is anywhere from a few days to a month.

But a lot, I mean a lot of things can affect your sense of taste. From, temperature, to

altitude to music.

That Gustatory cortex I mentioned takes in information from a lot of different sources

from your other senses.

And memory affects taste too. There’s a thing called conditioned taste aversion or

CTA. Most of us have experienced this, for example my sister hates buffalo chicken dip,

I mean hates it, because a few years ago she ate it around the same time she got a nasty

stomach flu. So now a circuit in her amygdala is like, GIRL DO NOT EAT THAT DIP, YOU WILL

GET SICK. And a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience found that that negative associate

is particularly strong if you’re in the same place as that bad experience.

Not to get all evolutionary psychology on you, but that makes sense. If our ancestors

wandering about savannah came across some bad berries, they’d be more likely to survive

if their brain associated that place and berry with throwing up or something so they wouldn’t

eat it again.

but on the other hand, good experiences might make food taste better, so if you want to

one day get your kid to like vegetables, make it fun! Like put broccoli on top of mashed

potato mountains so it looks like a little landscape.. okay yeah you know what… I don’t

think you can make vegetables fun.

So no, that whole your taste buds change every 7 years is a bit of wives tale. Your taste

buds change all the time, and a lot of things affect the how something actually tastes.

To learn more about how music can make you taste things differently, check out this great

video from our friends over at BritLab, it’s blew my mind, go watch it, i really recommend

it.