Talk:Sweetness

Sweetness of mirror sugars
Dextrose comes in left- and right-handed enantiomers; only the right-handed version can be metabolized. Does the left-handed version (levose?) taste sweet?
 * Did you mean Levulose? "... Levulose [has] a natural taste similar to that of sugar but more mellowed." from [http://diabeticsdezire.com/faq.html] Monkeyman 01:52, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that that's actually mirror-dextrose, from the description. I would expect mirror-dextrose to have zero caloric content but it might be sweet; I have no idea. --Andrew 02:14, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * The left-handed monosaccharides are similar in taste to their natural counterparts, but cannot be metabolized. The sweetness receptor does not appear to be specific to any particular compound, but rather to recognize a broad range of compounds, so the fact that mirror saccharides are sweet is not terribly surprising. Shimmin 21:13, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Seek out a referece for this point, as I heard it, L-glucose had no sweetness, a faint salty flavor is all. This is logical, the same failure of the L-molecule to fit in the digestive enzyme catalytic site prevents it from acting in the taste protein "pocket".  I don't have a reference for this handy, but I did taste them both in high school biology
 * Here's your answer: "Curiously, although d- and l-glucose are spatial enantiomers, they are prosymmetric with regard to the glycophore; that is, with regard to the sweet receptor, they are effectively identical (Shallenberger 1997), leading to the potential use of l-hexose mono- (Levin 1981) and di-saccharides (Bakal 1984) as non-caloric bulk sweeteners." Quote taken from directly from http://www.springerlink.com/content/920760277g17724r/fulltext.html Jeh25 (talk) 02:41, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

class.64.252.24.88 (talk) 19:02, 24 December 2007 (UTC) Ah, that's interesting! Do you know if anyone has tried to use them as sugar replacements? If they are equally sweet but cannot be metabolized, it seems one could make a reasonable sugar replacement by inorganically synthesizing, say, fructose, then letting some bug digest all the dextrose... when you say they cannot be metabolized, what does that mean? Do they pass from the digestive tract into the bloodstream? Are they safely eliminated from the body? Presumably they cannot be used as an energy source... --Andrew 00:35, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
 * While they are presumably useful as sugar substitutes, in the US at least, no one has submitted a new drug petition to the FDA for L-glucose or any other. Their chief defect is that while they are several times more expensive than sugar, they are no sweeter than sugar. Shimmin 10:22, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

How is sweetness measured?
Could somebody explain what exactly is meant when they say that something is 2,000x as sweet as something else? Thanks! DanKeshet 05:14, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)


 * My understanding of sweetness, and it may be wrong, is that the sweetness of something is determined by the number of molecules that that substance takes to trigger the sweetness receptor in the taste bud. For example, let's say that it takes 10,000 molecules of substance X to trigger the sweetness receptor in tastebuds.  Now let's say that it takes only 5,000 molecules of substance Y to trigger the sweetness receptor in the tastebuds.  You could say that substance Y is twice as sweet as substance X.  And if it only took 1 molecule of substance Z to activate the receptors, substance Z would be 10,000 times as sweet as substance X and 5,000 times as sweet substance Y.

etc... --Henrybaker 03:37, 3 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Please add new comments/questions under a new heading. Thanks. Richard001 05:53, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually this is how it's done Sigh Ns (talk) 00:12, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The slate link is correct, but the problem remains that the phrase “X times sweeter than sucrose" is very misleading for two reasons: a) “high-intensity” sweeteners are rarely sweeter than concentrated sucrose; instead, the ratio refers to the amount needed to evoke a threshold (ie very very weak) response and b) it mistakenly implies that that all sweeteners have similar psychophysical slopes across concentration when in reality the relative sweetness of a compound to sucrose varies greatly across concentration. Jeh25 (talk) 19:53, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Irrelevant material?
The intro has the following at the end of it.
 * In the English language, things that are pleasant in a more general sense are often called sweet, in phrases such as "sweet rest," "sweet revenge," "sweet dreams," or "home sweet home." In many other languages, both ancient and modern, the adjective meaning sweet can also be used to describe things that are in any way very good.

What does this have to do with the topic? The topic seems to be related to the sense of taste. This material is not relevant and detracts from the article. At best this material belongs in another article but, frankly, I'm not sure what that article would be able. Wikipedia, after all, is not a dictionary.

I'm going to going to remove this. If somebody has a different viewpoint, feel free to restore, rephrase, comment, or whatever.

--Mcorazao 19:42, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It could be relevant on a section about the word's etymology. Richard001 07:00, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Does the photograph of the girl with the lollipop really lend anything to this topic. And should it be properly captioned? (Sorry, I'm not that confident with captioning yet to do it myself) GideonJones (talk) 06:25, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Sweet redirects to sweetness???
There is a rock and roll band named sweet but now it redirects to sweetness. You have to search on The Sweet to get to the band but that's no their name. Ozmaweezer 15:07, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

almost universally regarded as a pleasurable experience
Not necessarily. If you're drunk or hungover, it's more likely you'll be repulsed by the idea of eating sweet food, but savoury food will appeal to you greatly.--So Oaty (talk) 15:48, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Almost universally regarded as a pleasurable experience...by the sober. —₲ravity ₵ontrol —Preceding undated comment added 23:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC).

Elepus?
I don't have time to look it up but I'm pretty sure that the line about elepus ("and elepus is more than 9 times sweeter than sucrose.") should go, considering that elepus doesn't seem to be a real thing.

Evolution is a theory
"In the natural settings that human primate ancestors evolved in, sweetness intensity should indicate energy density, while bitterness tends to indicate toxicity"

should be

"In the natural settings that human primate ancestors are theorized to have evolved in, sweetness intensity should indicate energy density, while bitterness tends to indicate toxicity"

until evolution is proven as fact, why not stay unbias and fair and tell it as it is? ;) 50.47.151.223 (talk) 13:55, 17 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Evolution is one of the strongest theories going, AND it is a fact too. The word "theory" in science does not mean some sort of unsubstantiated wild guess, but an explanation for an observed phenomenon which has evidence to back it up. In the world of science, there appears to be little or no dissent as regards that point, and this is reflected in Wikipedia. The article should not be modified for those who refuse to accept the theory for whatever reasons they have. The statement, as written was NOT unbiased. Evolution, for some reason sparks off certain people much more than other theories. We don't appear to see anyone disagree with the theory of universal gravitation, for instance, other than refinements in the face of work done illustrating spacetime curvature.2.125.67.41 (talk) 23:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)Lance Tyrell

Examples of sweet substances (and Lead Poisoning)
I am pretty sure that the Lead Acetate was not good for the ancient Romans. That said, Lead poisoning was a universal problem effecting all classes, not just the aristocracy. By far the primary cause of the ailment, and it is a well known fact, that their drinking water was transported in Lead pipes. retrograde62 21:26, 20 Jun 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.189.161.147 (talk)

Sugar alcohols could be mentioned
Sugar alcohols might be of interest. Xylitol for example is a common sweetener in processed foods and candy. 67.167.106.3 (talk) 12:59, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Sweetness appears to have the highest taste recognition threshold?
Sweetness appears to have the highest taste recognition threshold, being detectable at around 1 part in 200 of sucrose in solution. By comparison, bitterness appears to have the lowest detection threshold, at about 1 part in 2 million for quinine in solution.[4]

But at 300000x sweetness, Lugduname would be detected at 1 part in 6 million — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.157.8.253 (talk) 07:56, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

A question, maybe a fact for the page
What would tasting something pure which is >1,000x sweeter than sugar taste like? At what point is it considered 'excess'? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:48F8:3022:D9E:B4C6:5220:7DB8:9D64 (talk) 12:32, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Heavy water
Supposedly heavy water has a sweet taste although I can't find any actual research on the subject. I do think it's interesting in the sense that makes humans able to distinguish between regular and heavy water by taste. Also, what do sugar and heavy water have in common? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXHVqId0MQc — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jestempies (talk • contribs) 15:01, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Food temperature affect sweetness perception
As this article says: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542652/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.237.43.108 (talk) 18:38, 4 October 2018 (UTC)