I mean I remember I got H1N1 when I was a kid (I’m 19 years old right now), and the doctor prescribed me this medicine. I know that medicine isn’t supposed to taste good, however this one is the worst of the worst.
I was also prescribed tablets for depression, and the tablets taste gross when is dissolves in my mouth.
Why is it that 99% of medications don’t taste good?
In: Chemistry
Our taste receptors simple register electrical impulses when a molecule binds to them, which is interpreted by the brain as taste.
Overall, there’s not a heck of a lot of chemical compounds out there that we know of that taste “good” to any given person, even when you account for variability in tastes. Chemical space is mind-boggingly large, almost larger than we’re capable of comprehending. And the molecules and combinations thereof that give rise to things we think taste good is miniscule in comparison.
When you make a brand new pharmaceutical drug, that likely has never before existed on earth, the chance of that drug tasting like, say, cinnamon is probably zero unless it contained the molecule [Cinnamaldehyde](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamaldehyde), which is where that flavor comes from. Since having flavor molecules mixed in with a drug would run the risk of chemically interfering with its behavior in the body, there’s no reason to add such molecules to make drugs more palatable.
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