You sometimes hear that taste has five dimensions (salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami). What does that really mean? Are these dimensions in the traditional sense?
When I think of dimensions, I think of how any possible “thing” can be described as a combination of the dimensions. For example, any point in a cartesian plane can be assigned X and Y, and any color can be described using a combination of red, green, and blue.
Does that mean any taste in the world can be described as a combination of these five dimensions? For example, can a mango, a Kit Kat, a tortilla, and milk all be uniquely described as a combination of salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami and nothing else?
In: Biology
There are, more or less, 5 distinct types of taste receptors…sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami (savory). But “taste” is more than just taste receptors, it also includes smell (which includes an _enormous_ number of different sensations) as a vitally important core component. Texture and temperature and general “Feel” also play a role in the overall experience of eating.
I’m trying to find a good example with other senses, but the overall point is that while we talk about specifically the five tastes as “taste”, in actuality what we experience when we taste food is a combination of senses.
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