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OUR MYSTERIOUS SENSE OF TASTE

               Bite into your favorite food, and immediately your sense of taste is activated.   But just how does this amazing process work?           Your tongue –as well as other parts of your mouth and throat –includes clusters of skin cells called taste buds. Many are located within papillae on the surface of the tongue. A taste bud contains up to a hundred receptor cells, each of which can detect one of four types of taste –sour, salty, sweet, or bitter. Spicy is in a different category altogether. Spices stimulate pain receptors –not taste buds. In any event, taste-receptor cells are connected to sensory nerves that, when stimulated by chemicals in food, instantly transmit signals to the lower brain stem.       Taste, however, involves more than your mouth. The five million odor receptors in your nose –which allow you to detect some 10,000 unique odors –play a vital role in the tasting process. It has been estimated that about 75 percent of what we call taste is actu