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
Your tongue has 5 kinds of taste bud sensors. One for each of the 5 tastes. It doesn’t matter what you call it dimensions facets whatever. Salt tastes salty because it chemically activates the salt tastebuds. Bitter for bitter, sour for sour, etc
In addition to taste, we also sense texture, temperature, smell of a food. That’s why a kitkat tastes different than a chocolate bar. The texture is different. That’s why chocolate bar tastes different than a hot chocolate, the temp and smell is different.
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