Why Does Salt Change the Taste of Everything?
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- Опубликовано: 1 июн 2024
- If your coffee is too bitter, add a pinch of salt. If your salad isn’t sour enough, add a pinch of salt. If your beer is too bitter, add a pinch of salt. Salt has a seemingly magical ability to enhance good flavors and dampen bad ones. Come along on George’s epic journey into the wilds of salt science.
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Credits:
Executive Producer:
Matthew Radcliff
Producers:
Elaine Seward
Andrew Sobey
Darren Weaver
Writer/Host:
George Zaidan
Scientific Consultants:
Gary Beauchamp, Ph.D.
Michelle Boucher, PhD
Brianne Raccor, PhD
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell
Reactions is a production of the American Chemical Society.
© 2022 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.
Sources:
An overview of binary taste-taste interactions
doi.org/10.1016/S0950-3293(02...
Handbook of Perception Volume 6A - Edward C. Carterette - Google Books
books.google.com/books?hl=en&...
The taste of table salt - PMC
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Bitterness suppression as revealed by split-tongue taste stimulation in humans - ScienceDirect
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Taste of Sodium Chloride Solutions after Adaptation to Sodium Chloride: Implications for the "Water Taste" | Science
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s... 
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We have a pretty good understanding of how other tastes work, especially sweetness. Salt is just so damn… elusive.
What do you think of umami taste like fish and cheese and other stuff and the spice "taste" with the Scoville heat units like Jalapeños and the coolness "taste" with mint? I'm not exactly a fan of sweetness. I'm more of a salt and umami and spice guy. Except for drinks. I like sweet but not overly sweet drinks. I like soda because it's bubbly. I like pickles. Sometimes I would eat pepperoncini or hot cherry peppers but Jalapeños are even spicier unless you put it in a sandwich or burger where it's good. Serrano is way too much. Serranos are so hot I can't eat half a Serrano not even my brother who's the spice king can handle Serrano. Johnny Scoville from chase the heat can handle Carolina Reapers.
Like America needs more salt. Some things should remain secret.
NO, I am not sticking my tongue in that! For the same reason I never went through with the tongue split. (well actually i never did that cuz one slice is often not the only slice you will need and that just doesn’t sound fun. ). 😂🤣 I love this channel though. You folks are awesome!
I just have to say this is such a well made and beautiful science video
Also you really have to make a video showing how salt can taste sweet
If wikipedia is anything to go by, KBr has a sweet taste when dilute, bitter at moderate concentration, and salty at high concentration, while NaBr is salty across the board. Otherwise, there have not been enough tests for the impacts of NH4Cl, SrCl2, RbCl, MgCl2, or CaCl2, for example.
Am I right to think we should take this video with a pinch of salt?
I liked your comment. I'm not happy about it, but I gave you a like.
@@ACSReactions- being salty about it doesn't cover up your bitterness.🙂
I really enjoyed this episode, thanks George and crew! I'd been under the impression Salt Receptor 1™ was all there was to the sense of saltiness and wasn't aware of the cross-taste interactions. But finding out there's a lot more we don't understand is always a pleasant surprise. Who knows, maybe this video will spur someone to go on to do research on this and expand our understanding a little more.
I think if the whole chemist thing falls through, you could be a comedian! Thanks for digging into a subject I didn't know I wanted to know and the real laughs.
What a joy to see this video! As a fellow scientist, loved the approach and depth of analysis. Will definitely try some of the experiments just for fun!
Congrats for the production!!
You tried the KCl second.
What colors you perceive are affected by what you looked at before, what it is next to, and what the coloring of the whole "scene" is.
Isn't how you taste KCl similar to whether you saw a blue or a gold dress?
I've always put salt on grapefruit because it made it taste so much better,, I also eat lemons with salt, although I don't do that nearly as much as when I was younger (my dentist was always horrified that I did that, but I absolutely love sour stuff)
Funny and informative is my favorite kind of RUclips video 🙌
11:29 I spit my salted coffee out lmao
This is so cool and educational, thank you so much
3:48 - the saltiest of the salt-bae impressions :p
So does milk make coffee less bitter because of it's salt content? (Milk is surprisingly salty)
i find it more sweet
Wow, that somehow did not occur to us the whole time we were making this, but that's a fascinating question. Obviously the fats and sugars play a huge part, but you would think that the salt must factor in, as well. Now we're going to spend the rest of the day trying to think of a way to test this...
@@ACSReactions, what about using coconut milk (the stuff for cooking has very little salt in it) or making your own nut/soy milk (store bought has a lot of salt in it)?
Both of these would have the fat and sugar content w/o the salt and it would allow you to do a blind taste test (add salt to some). I'd suggest trying it on peeps that add this stuff to their coffee anyway to avoid being distracted by the novelty
Not just the sodium. There's also the potassium, the lactose, the fat and the protein.
I didn’t know how much we don’t know about salt! Well, in flavor, anyways. Fascinating!
This video was great so funny and informative. Thank you!
Add salt to sour pineapples, oranges etc.
I've heard the thing about adding salt to coffee years ago, but dismissed it. This video convinced me to at least try it because it went beyond just an old-wive's-tale, it actually tried to prove it's not just a placebo. That said, I wish George had actually specified HOW MUCH salt to add to coffee (what's a "pinch"? is it to a cup or pot?)
I´m really enjoying your videos. It´s just amazing. Congratulations for your excellent job
How does such a fascinating video have only 9k views 😱
George is an awesome host. More videos like this!
George is from Maryland!
Great video 👨🔬
Thank you! Love the humor!
Oh, my gosh. Denatonium Benzoate does taste really terrible and it lingers on the tongue. I think it was one of your videos where they said that toddlers was more likely to like the taste of antifreeze with the bitter substance in it. Also it did not work as an deterrent when my bunny was chewing on its cage, rather it had the extreme opposite effect 😫
In your dislike of IPA's, you've identified the reason for their popularity- they go remarkably well with salty foods in hot weather where we're often craving salt due to loss via perspiration. The hypothesis then, might be that bitterness increases intake of 'water binding' compounds like sugars, acids, and salts.
I recently fell in love with this channel -- but, if I may, BRING US MORE ANDREW CONTENT!! alongside George and our other hosts, ofc, but if I may hype the underdog BIG FAN OF ANDREW CONTRIBUTIONS! regardless, keep it up, team!!
Very Well Made Video
I'm amazed by everything that's this video!
There's a couple of variables which can't be isolated which contribute to this quandary: how the sense of smell interacts with the sense of taste and that our senses are difference engines.
When eating/drinking we are also smelling the environment (including that which we are consuming) adding to the noted brain involvement. Some people can consciously smell when the air changes salt content.
The "difference engine" part is where our senses align with the current environment. We don't smell or taste ourselves to enable us to better detect the environment. That means we have to "cleanse our palette" between tasting different things. Like at a wine tasting, where items used to cleanse are favorable to tasting wines. Unfortunately, when tasting something as basic as salt, what would we use to cleanse that wouldn't upset the balance? I think if that solution & protocol can be determined testing would achieve breakthroughs.
Don't try and take away my bitterness damn you!
Early in the video and I think I see your problem.
As you allude to with C=N, chemistry and biology often look like strange bedfellows. The dynamic nature of living organisms, and our ability to compensate for, and exist in variable ranges of environment is incredibly complex. That's why med school takes so long.
My guess is that 'perception' is the end product of a complex array of sensors (taste, smell, texture, look, context) filtered through a processing system (I like bitter, I don't like sour, I have never tried mushrooms, I once ate a slug and became ill therefore slimy food evokes emesis).
There are probably factors such as:
Age: Senescence and tolerance
Sex: Because
Sodium intake: Possible that you crave NaCl when low.
Hydration status: Possibly alterations in perceptions of NaCl when dehydrated generally.
Other electrolyte balances/status: See above.
Temperature: There may be prophylactic sensors that predict that we will require >NaCl in hot environments due to loss via sweat.
You also have to realise that we are dealing with neurons to convey messages here. How does a neuron propagate a signal again? Sodium Potassium pumps IIRC.
---------------------------------
Oh, yeah, you addressed some of this. Nice.
The tasting 'everything' makes sense if you take into account that salt may be directly affecting signal propagation.
Perhaps it doesn't interact with the receptor itself. The complicated interactions it has with various neurons that distortions in that balance lead to random misfiring.
@ 9:00 loving this video!
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Yeah, would make sense. So there are sodium channels, but does it have to be a receptor? Is there no way for salt to cross cell membranes with other ions?
Again, I honestly feel that if you were hyponatremic, you would either taste the NaCl differently. And you would prefer it to KCl.... could totally be wrong though.
Maybe the 'taste' is just the neurological consequence of changes in ion concentrations in various regions on the tongue?
Wait... don't we also have taste receptors on our anus? How do they react to salt?
as a gamer, i can tell you that saltiness reduces bitterness by way of malding in chat.
Well... Isn't the common point between KCl and NaCl in fact... chloride ions?
Are we sure they are not responsible for the salty taste?
We had some bitter chocolate last night, and I tried it with a little salt...and it helped!
Aweee the chloride and ions being inseparable is so sweet 🥲
Works with cocoa too, except it only matters if you're a crazy person like me who likes their cocoa incredibly strong. Most people's cocoa mask the bitterness with massive amounts of sugar, but if that's not your thing, try the salt trick.
Excelente .
THIS IS AMAZING. i love science. imma put salt everywhere.
on an open wound aswell, yay!
I don't like bitter beers - I've been putting a pinch of salt in my beer for 20 years now!
nerves use sodium potassium pump to trigger an action potential to send nerve signals. maybe this has to do with it?
This is beautiful
Right off the bat, and I'm serious, I haven't watched any more of this from this moment... James Hoffman (sp?) did not recommend salting coffee. I just watched that episode, and I'm not a coffee snob but I am a coffee addict, so I found the idea interesting but I'd never try it. I love my coffee straight black and dripped automatically. JH being the most reasonable coffee snob I know of though, I had to see his point of view on it. He said there is a marked difference in the bitterness of the coffee, but even a little salt adds a clear saltiness to the coffee, which is not great. He recommended better coffee, but if you have to endure terrible coffee (and this is usually something like robusta, not arabica), salt could help if the bitterness is worse than the saltiness. He definitely didn't recommend it 😂
I love black coffee and IPAs. My mouth must be naturally really salty.
The common denominator of NaCl and KCl is the negative chloride ion. I wonder if there is an interaction there with the taste receptors / taste receptor 2? #nobelprizeincoming
My thoughts as well- considering also CaCl...
2 salt 2 receptor
Is there a reason Reactions didn't make this a blinded taste test?
[Qualia]
RUclips video:
There's No Such Thing As Orange
It works on oranges that are sour and sweet
Has anyone done tests where instead of asking people what they taste, that instead they monitor the strength of the signal along the nerves? (maybe that's not possible, idk)
Yes! That type of testing is how we know that a membrane channel is involved in tasting salt. The graph at 10:23 is from exactly that kind of study.
@@ACSReactions 🤦♂️ I had watched that and by the end forgot 😣
Potassium chloride? As in the ingredient of letha1 inject1ions?
Thumbing through the PDR, you'd notice that under "Mechanism Of Action" for 99.9% of all drugs, its 'unknown' (*for their specified on-label use). I always found it odd that we just use these medications even though we don't know exactly how they work, just that they do in fact work.
99.9 is an exaggeration.
Mmm... no. That isn't correct.
I'm just a lowly RN, and I still understand the most commonly proposed MOAs of all drugs I administer.
Even ones like Lithium Bicarbonate have been extensively studied... it's just that we can't know with 100% certainty. Still, the number of times I have heard that 'we have no idea what the true mechanism of Lithicarb is' is as silly as it is incorrect.
The only thing I can think of is actually SSRIs. Even then, we have multiple theories on how it may work. Just no certainty.
Everything in biology is a range, that's why chem and physics majors struggle. Ironic seeing as though electron shells exemplify the same concept.
@@user-um2uf9zq4c agreed! I'll admit, 99.9% was a pretty gross # to throw out there. As with the physics regarding the electron shells; we all know how an electron can jump orbitals then dump that needed energy to go back to a rest-state - it's pop-sci at this point. Despite that, you could still do your post grad research on the topic as the further you dive into most any field, the more complex and 'unsimplifiable' it gets.
I appreciate that you can give a reply with knowledge that stems from practice.
@@BlackWolf42- Oh, wow... I didn't know that.
:(
Sigh... one of these days I'll go back to Khan academy and redo physics.
My understanding went as far as probabilities. Which is much more analogous for humans. We can't DNA test everyone, we have no idea how people metabolise drugs (especially horrible prodrugs like tramadol) until we use them.
We are very much still living in the prehistoric era in healthcare compared to what 'science' is 'capable of'.
Money is the name of the game.
Could salt receptor 2 perhaps be the Sodium-Potassium Pump membrane enzyme? -> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93potassium_pump
BUT ALSO salt is healthy to have if you have a defficiency of it in your body lol
We are the salt of the world.
This is why you take salt and lime with tequila.
*cheap pungent tequila
@@eaterdrinker000 pretty sure even good tequila is made better with salt and lime.
Is adding a pinch of salt to salt would make it less salty?
You could actually make a solution of sodium without the chloride, sodium iodide. And you could likewise make a solution of potassium chloride.
On that matter, the thought did strike me that that there could be a way to narrow down Salt Receptor 2. Namely, see if potassium solutions with something other than chlorine as the anion still taste salty, and whether nontoxic chlorine solutions with a 2+ ion still taste salty. This could establish whether Channel 2 is reacting to chloride, or whether it's still responding to +1 ions while being less picky than the sodium channel.
salt to taste
salt for the little hole in that face
better go
thanks to the little bird that let me know
that’s not you
how’d he tell you to, i
found you
what you
when you
he’s all talk
he’s just playing cards at the boardwalk
watch that frown
talk just a little bit, to calm you down
This boy just said IPA's suck..
What else can I do but DISLIKE??
errr ... have you ever thought of adding sugar to the coffee?
Like ... 1 teaspoon of sugar only.
Or maybe change coffee quality ... or most probably, remove all limescales from the kettle.
This is not science ... it called "COMMON SENSE" .... I know ... we (they ... you) lost all common sense in these last 2 years.
bro you're yelling at a pbs science show for talking about science
@@platypiunited5509 This isn't the first strange comment he's left on this channel, not sure what his deal is 🤷♂️
Being a scientist, normally I do not post salty responses to YT vids but if ever there was a moment to remark that a video left a bad taste, this HAS to be it.
Because around 11:06 when the host calls out the unresolved "mystery receptor' so elusive amongst the 'taste community' I laughed so hard my salted coffee gushed through my nose.
I was thinking by that point,
If Na+ has a well-understood salt taste mechanism 1 ...
Then.... WHAT oh WHAT could salt taste mechanism 2 possibly BE???
Uh, just what else is in that there salt? Oh chloride you say? Right...
MAYBE just MAYBE could there be a chloride-related mechanism??
Turns out, the fifth result on the first page of Google Scholar for search terms "chloride ion receptor taste" right now is this research out of Tokyo confirmed the same, released earlier this year :
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.23.481615v1.full.pdf
It's not precisely a chloride channel as it is with sodium, but rather that chloride blocks taste receptors for sweet and umami that which provides a second major salt taste mechanism.
Somehow, sometimes the preposterously obvious is really quite elusive isn't it? After seeing George demonstrate on-screen that KCl tastes almost the same as NaCl, is it odd it didn't occur to anyone creating or consulting the show that there might be a Cl- mechanism? Perhaps a follow-on video could be warranted. And if so, maybe you can also explain how the 'taste community' ... missed this possibility?
Maybe we could have a chat with that study author, a certain Atsuko reachable at a_yama@okayama-u.ac.jp
And ask how the elusively obvious idea came to him??
I'll leave my fellow comments section readers here to judge whether salt really can make almost anything taste better, including this YT comment :-)
And to the video creators, good work keeping us engaged in the topic long enough to want to follow a hunch your vid brought up!
Fair points. Could be the mechanism. Could also be a combination of that with many other mechanisms working in concert, as is typical in human physiology.
Your comment reads a little supercilious though.