Talk:Taste/Archive 2

In Our Time
Rich Farmbrough, 03:20, 16 September 2010 (UTC).

Savory vs Umami
One particular editor, Fleetham, is unwilling to accept prior consensus about using the term "Savory" or "Savoriness" instead of "Umami". In new discussion, several counterarguments have been given, but Fleetham ignores these, only states his/her opinion as simple fact, and will not budge on the change, undoing any attempts to revert to the priorly agreed upon term.

Mhalberstam (talk) 00:51, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment I do not consider savory and umami to be synonyms, and I do not think that one is a subset of the other. Savory, to me, is "tasty but not sweet", which can include umami, while umami is "rich, mouth filling" and may be sweet (some pastry creams, for example.) Savory is a much more used term, or was; savory is not the fifth taste, it the result of the five (so far) tastes. Editors are going to have to decide whether to be popular or correct (both terms have their proper uses in Wikipedia, IMAO.) htom (talk) 18:06, 8 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Favor umami for basically the same reaons, as I've explained previously. Looie496 (talk) 20:32, 8 October 2010 (UTC)


 * As much as I'd rather have it be savory, it's already been resolved in favor of umami. We should not be bringing this up again; it's a waste of talk space. (See Talk:Umami/Archive_1)  ~rezecib  ( talk ) 14:45, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Favor umami, I believe it's more widely used in academic sources. For instance, this introductory textbook uses it, and searching umami or umami taste on Google Scholar returns far more relevant results than savory or savory taste (most of the latter results are either not about taste at all, or not about sensation and perception but about social stuff, e.g. "Could the savory taste of snacks be a further risk factor for overweight in children?"). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 00:53, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Favor savory, First, the discussion on the Umani article has very little bearing here. Second, the only thing resolved on the Umani article discussion was that there was no consensus to change the title (i.e., a lack of consensus is not proof of consensus). VMS Mosaic (talk) 06:52, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * And there's still no consensus (and probably won't be, except possibly in favor of umami), so for self-consistency it should be referred to as umami here.  ~rezecib  ( talk ) 03:30, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Umami is preferred term in the relevant academic literature (e.g., ) and has the benefit of being a more precise term for a certain sensory effect elicited by given classes of molecules. The colloquial use of the word "savory" as a flavor description may or may not include umami as a subset of its flavor profile in various instances. For precision and clarity, it is preferable to use the term umami when referring specifically to the relevant taste and use "savory" only when it can be adequately explained to differ from umami in a given use. &mdash; Scientizzle 16:41, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Don't let anyone hijack the article and stuff it up in the guise of "improving" the article by multiple sequential changes, each of which look innocuous but which cumulatively amount to total change of the article and loss of useful content. It is not compulsory to submit to deviousness of any sort, under any guise, ever. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck, regardless of its pretentions to pheasantry. As to the term umami, I cannot claim to have researched this in depth. But I can say that when I read around on the topic, I noted that circa the mid 1990s, when I did some extensive research into the evolution of taste, umami was being noted as a possible fifth "primary" taste, but there was some debate as to whether this was the case, or whether it was an artificially new category arising from language use and reification - I cited some of this literature at the time. Surveying the literature in relation to this article, I noted that this has been settled and umami is now an accepted taste category.


 * Since umami is a Japanese word, naturally enough the English-speaking world has sought a translation of the term. And Japanese researchers writing to the English-speaking world have endeavoured to give an English translation - beginning with the Japanese researcher who first wrote about it circa 1975. The two translations I noted were "savoury", and "delicious", with the latter being a more literal translation, and the former being the most useful English synonym. So "savoury" and umami are used synonymously in the literature, with umami as the term and "savoury" as a means for English-speakers to grasp the concept encompassed in the term. The idiosyncratic leanings of any given editor must be considered just that. To decide how you strucure this article folks, all you have to do is refer to the literature. While not all of the reliable literature is available for free viewing on the internet, there is more than enough available. Perusing the 'further reading' section as I write this comment, I didn't recognise anything that looked like the original Japanese researcher's name. But I did find material by him when doing my bit of editing for this article: and I had no idea of his involvement prior to that, meaning all you have to do is some searches on umami and his work will inevitably turn up. The upshot is that umami needs to stay of course, because the literature does use that term. However, like any concept which has non-English origins, it needs a brief description for English readers, which is where the succinct synonym descriptor "savoury" comes in. And a mention of the literal translation is also in order. You would EXPECT that in an encyclopedic article with lay-readers as the target audience. If you have doubts about the current content and structure, check the link above that I created to an earlier version. You wouldn't want to revert to that. But you can capitalise on that content from it which is useful. When an idiosyncratic editor imposes his or her style by the stealth of a thousand small edits, this can be difficult to recognise at first, then more difficult to deal with once they've created a fait accompli. But if you don't find behaviour X acceptable, don't accept it. You don't have to go to war. But nor do you have to accept the unacceptable. Wotnow (talk) 15:19, 11 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Did you mean that "savory" was the literal, and "delicious" the figurative, translation; or vice-versa? (Being serious, not snarky, because you seem to be saying both.) htom (talk) 21:56, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that comment. Good point. The sentence "The two translations I noted were "savoury", and "delicious", with the latter being a more literal translation" is the key. And within this the term "latter" is key. So the latter term (in that sentence) is "delicious", and it is this which I recall being noted as the literal translation. So in terms of your question, it is "savoury" which is the figurative. Thanks for reminding me of that descriptor (figurative). It is a more succinct way of trying to describe the use of the term "savoury". Ironic really, that I only paid passing attention to the whole issue of umami for the years that I kept an eye on the evolution-diet-taste perception literature (it not being central at the time of my earlier year-long foray into the area, and the exercise of keeping an eye on the literature being to create mental flags of what knowledge stays the same and what changes, agreement on umami being one of the things that stabilised over time - i.e. agreement that it's a real construct, not just a byproduct of language reification). It is only in contributing to this article, and my own comments above, that I've given it a bit more thought. Remarkable that the stimuli for us to formalise our thoughts can come as an unanticipated byproduct. That's the story of my life really. Regards Wotnow (talk) 23:34, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Refactoring
Hi, I've boldly refactored the article structure capitalizing on the fine work by User:Fleetham to break the basic tastes section with indexes. The indexes helped categorize each paragraph, but the resulting sections where too short to be organized by 'basic taste'. I've organized them by concept instead, creating new sections with better reading flow. What do you think? Diego Moya (talk) 15:58, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Aversive vs. appetitive?
I will leave out the opinion about this being fatuous nonsense, but why are we formally classifying the 5/6 basic tastes as appetizing and unappetizing? It's absolutely not true from a food / culinary sense that bitterness and sourness discourage consumption, whereas saltiness, sweetness, and umami make us likely to eat things. Scientifically, who knows, but the article cited does not look terribly insightful. Do we have any citation that this classification of 4/5 things into 2 categories (itself a seemingly silly exercise) is the accepted norm among scientists, food experts, or anyone else? Or is this just somebody writing their opinion? - Wikidemon (talk) 06:37, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * My familiarity with this doesn't extend to knowing the sources for everything, but it is clearly correct that sweetness is intrinsically rewarding and bitterness and sourness are intrinsically aversive. The motivational value of saltiness depends, I believe, on the status of the body. I don't recall seeing any literature relating to umami, although intuition suggests that it should be intrinsically appetitive (as a signal of protein content). Looie496 (talk) 17:50, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * On the question of losing some insight, and some useful information, yes the article has. Nevertheless, it is broadly true that one can find an appetitive vs aversive dichotomy. This certainly pertains to sweetness and bitterness, with the dichotomy holding up across a broad range of fields in studies of both human and non-human animals: i.e. there is cross-species stability of this concept, supported by approaches from psychological, anthropological, behavioural, zooloogical (we can use this to capture any sub-field such as primatology etc), neurophysiological, ethological, biochemical etc approaches (although there's some interesting twists from biochemical approaches). J. Dobbing's edited (1987) book "Sweetness" brings together a range of studies in that regard. T. Johns' (1990) book ''With Bitter Herbs They Shall Eat It: Chemical Ecology and the Origin of Human Diet and Medicine", is also helpful. Particularly useful is his listing of all the ways in which food is processed on pages 293-295. There has been quite a bit of research and publication done since these days. It will be interesting to see if Richard Wrangham is aware of Johns' book. There has been a lot published over the years, and I have kept a general eye on it. The two books I mention are not outdated by later material. Rather, some of the key concepts are consolidated.
 * I would expect umami to shape up as appetitive in literature approaching taste perception from the appetitive-aversive/appoach-avoidance perspectives. One important thing to bear in mind when dealing with any animal behaviour (and I especially include us in this) is that for animal behaviour with an evolutionary foundation (i.e. somehow over time it has been "selected for"), the idea of contemporary non-human animals, or ancestral human animals approaching any phenomenon at all from some perspective which we currently have courtesy of science, language, knowledge and education, is absolutely ludicrous. Such an animal cannot approach a food from a "ooh this has compound X" perspective. It can only like or dislike the food, survive or not survive from ingestion of the food etc. Similarly of course with things like mate choice. Bright colours tell us about the health of a fish or bird etc. The only thing the animals in question "know" is for some reason they like X. If x involves some sort of pleasant sensation, hello, that's all that's needed for animals in question to repeat the behaviour. And those that repeat the behaviour and thereby produce more offspring will, hello, be selected for!!! The best writers on these things differentiate between our knowledge of X, and contingencies operating for the animal in question. And those contingencies typically boil down to approach-avoidance dichotomies. An approach-avoidance dichotomy is found in response of bacteria to chemical gradients, and to various organisms to light-dark. It's pretty fascinating really, which is where the fun part comes in. And fun of course comes under "approach" behaviour. Regards Wotnow (talk) 02:50, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Umami definition
Hello, there seems to be some friction in the Umami subsection, so I thought it's probably time to bring it in the discussion page.

I think the section should start with a short definition, followed by examples and further ancillary info such as etymology. This much seems to be consensual.

I believe the current version achieves this, and I think it is virtually impossible to define umami with a NPOV without mentioning savouriness. Some editors seem to be pushing for a clear distinction between umami and savouriness, to the point that they keep pushing a vital part of the definition to the bottom of the subsection. Almost all the sources we have define umami in terms of savouriness, so unless other references are brought to the table, detailing how exactly savouriness and umami differ, this comes across as POV-pushing.

Please keep in mind that most non-specialised people (I would estimate 98% of our readership) don't know anything about umami, as opposed to the other four main tastes. Therefore, I find it important to offer a definition that anyone can understand, relating to familiar and popular concepts. Thanks. 221.47.185.2 (talk) 08:52, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is a case of POV - that would require a significant school of thought fighting over whether Umami and Savory are different or equal, and only one side being included here. What the recent edit war is about IMHO is the extent to which the sentence "often described as a savory, brothy or meaty taste" is part of a definition or rather an accidental clarification (i.e., would the taste be the same if it was not described in the West as savory?). If the latter, it doesn't need to be part of the first paragraph, although it very well may be there; its best placement would be indeed a matter of structuring the best reading flow. That said, I don't oppose the current form that begins with a definition based on properties of this taste, and which introduces familiar metaphoric terms second. Diego Moya (talk) 14:55, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * After saving this comment, I will change the contentious term "often" with the term "variously". The term "often" has quantitative connotations, which can only be settled by a thorough review of the literature. The term "variously" is factually true without implying anything about the frequencies of various term usages. Regards Wotnow (talk) 03:06, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Isn't the jury still out over whether there really is a taste called "umami"? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 16:02, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
 * There is no jury. Looie496 (talk) 18:06, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry - I was just using the term in a figurative sense, as the term is often used in the United Kingdom  -  I do not know whether the expression gets used that way in American English. I just meant that I believe that full consensus has not yet been reached on whether we can detect a fifth taste called "umanimi".

While I am here, I think this article should clarify that, given how few tastes human beings have, it is actually smells that give foods their different flavours. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 14:43, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I understood that you were using the term in a figurative sense. But even in a figurative sense, there is no jury -- there are just gradual shifts of opinion.  My understanding is that the majority of taste physiologists now believe that there are protein detectors in the taste system; see for example  and .  I am unable to locate any recent reviews that express doubt about the validity of the umami concept. Looie496 (talk) 17:38, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

"Bitter" ligands?
So the article describes what groups, ions, or ligands trigger sour (H+), salty (Na+), sweet (-CHO) and umami (-CNH2-COOH) (just to simplify), but the "bitter" section doesn't. Can "bitterness" be narrowed down to certain groups or ligands? -- megA (talk) 14:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Astringent
What is the reason for confining astringent to one passing mention? A billion people in India consider it a taste and have done for thousands of years, and it is the dominant taste of tea, which billions more are drinking every day. Spicemix (talk) 15:05, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Archiving
I noticed this page is getting a bit long. If no one objects I've added the archive template to the top of the page. 180 day incremental archive, minimum of 4 threads left on this page. Hope I'm not stepping on any toes by doing so. --0x0077BE (talk) 21:58, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I've been reading more about this and I guess you are supposed to achieve consensus before setting this sort of thing up. Since it's a bit late for that, if there are any problems, let me know and I'll make sure to fix them myself. --0x0077BE (talk) 03:35, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It's all good, don't worry about it. Looie496 (talk) 03:39, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Other tastes
A user has been adding something like this in good faith to the page lately, but his/her English is not very good so it's not very clear what's going on. I've removed the edits because they're not appropriate, but if anyone wants to help copy-edit here is the text:


 * In other culture, there might additional classifications of taste, ie. in Malay there are other sensation which is classified as taste pedas ("spicy"), maung (obnoxious), pedor (unable to explain), lemak (rich creamy, and hanyir (fishy) ).

I think parts of the first paragraph in "Basic Tastes" talking about piquance, fattiness and astringence could be combined with this paragraph and some of the reverted changing on metallicity into a small section maybe called "Other tastes" or "Proposed Basic Tastes". If I have a bit of time I can write this up, but if anyone else is interested, just putting it out there. -- 0x0077BE (talk) 23:50, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Metallic taste
I'm removing the "metallic taste" section as uncited. Citations 46 and 47 both link to this paper, which does not say that metallic taste has been accepted as a basic taste, but in fact says that it is primarily an olfactory phenomenon. It does say that metallic has occasionally been proposed as a basic tastes.

I found this article which specifically says that metallic as a basic taste is controversial, but that the findings were consistent with that. I'm going to remove metallic in its current form, but maybe a section called "other tastes" can be added, which could have a paragraph on the evidence for and against piquance, fattiness and metallicity as basic tastes. --0x0077BE (talk) 21:52, 7 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I came here specifically to learn more about metallic as a basic taste so removing the whole paragraph without replacing it with the information you gave here might not have been the most helpful choice. Saying something is controversial and pointing to the conflicting sources is totally acceptable for Wikipedia IMHO.


 * I don't object an "other tastes" section that could also include the proposed fatty acid taste for example but to be honest, according to my experience saying that something "could be done" or suchlike is not a very effective way of changing anything. Since you seem knowledgeable, can't you find the time to at least start such a section? --Mudd1 (talk) 18:17, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It can be time-consuming to get it right, and I'm by no means an expert on taste. Hopefully some interested party with more free time will do it. The section was removed because it was not verifiable, and as far as I can tell not accurate, as such, it wasn't adding anything to the article. Before, you could come to the article looking for information about metallic taste and find what was likely false information. Now you will find nothing, but you'll at least know that there's nothing here - this is also more likely to spur the addition of good material, when people find that it is lacking.


 * As for replacing the information on the page with the information here - I don't think that's a good idea. The information I put here was my cursory assessment of the situation, so that others could follow those leads. It's not encyclopedic content at all, so doesn't belong in the encyclopedia namespace. I just put it here as a justification for the removal and a proposed direction for its replacement. --0x0077BE (talk) 20:20, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Gustation system merger?
There is an article on the gustatory system that I would suggest merging with this one. There is a lot of overlap and IMO very few people will directly search for the gustatory system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustatory_system — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.24.241.107 (talk) 22:16, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

taste receptors
There should be a separate article on taste receptors and this article should also explain about taste receptors other than referring to articles about biochemical receptors or G-protein-coupled receptors. Ben T/C 18:40, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Ben! There is a separate article on taste receptors! Wikipedia has it all... Face-smile.svg  Lova Falk     talk   19:40, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Saltiness and amino acid
According to this article, there is some amino acid or peptide that makes a salty substance saltier to the tongue. Komitsuki (talk) 14:17, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Umami
Does anyone know why it isn't just called "savory"? I have never heard of anyone say "This tastes umami", but I have heard "This tastes savory". yonnie (talk) 20:55, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * "Savory" is vague. As a scientific term "umami" refers specifically to a taste that derives from protein.  The term is originally Japanese and has not yet propagated into widespread English use.  But when "umami" is used to described the fifth basic taste, it refers specifically to taste receptors that are activated by glutamate. The term "savory" is too ambiguous to get that across. Looie496 (talk) 21:58, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Taste Bud Receptor Areas
I believe that it has been an established fact that the taste buds responsible for all the tastes are found all over the mouth, and not concentrated anywhere or in any "main area". Yet, the four tastes taught in schools still have a sentence referring to a main area of the tongue that detects them.216.171.19.125 (talk) 01:45, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Alcohol
There is a particular sensation in the mouth when alcohol is consumed, especially when drinking distilled spirits. The clearest taste of this taste (!) is perceived when drinking vodka or (not recommended) pure surgical spirit, as they are both"tasteless" and odourless, yet this "alcohol taste" is clearly perceived. Has there been research done on this taste? Can it be added to the current tastes in the "Further sensations" section (e.g. kokumi or metallicness?), or is it a taste of its own? If so, under what name should we add it in the "further sensations" section? BigSteve (talk) 23:47, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Describing Unami
I know its a long stretch but could unami be better described in its effects and the sensation it gives? I'm from the west and I have not experienced unami that I know of despite eating a diverse amount of foods (including truly traditional Chinese/Japanese dishes). And our the other tastes besides the 5 already accepted basic tastes being researched as potential basic tastes? Basically I think it would be helpful to better explain the sections in this article and why there was only 4 accepted tastes but now there are five. And that there may be more and what areas of research are looking at as possible basic tastes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:B:A3C0:7:940F:A3A8:E5DF:4498 (talk) 16:59, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Existence of basic tastes
Does anyone have a current scientific source confirming the existence of the five basic tastes sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and umami? I mean, obviously they exist and there are five of them and they aren't just completely made up. I'm just having some trouble right now finding the citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.56.84 (talk) 22:09, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

touch
sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and umami seem to be similar to pleasure, hot, cold, pain, and touch.

Just granpa (talk) 12:24, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Bitterness
This area could be improved with more elaboration on the evolutionary aspect of bitterness. Here are three areas of information that could improve that aspect:

1. Information on convergent evolution in different species towards sensitivity to the bitter compound, PTC. Specifically, the article " Independent Evolution Of Bitter-taste Sensitivity In Humans And Chimpanzees" by Wooding, et al. speaks about these separate phenomena in chimps and humans.

2. A focus on the expression of the TAS2R gene, rather than its presence in organisms sensitive to bitter compounds, could provide more information on the evolutionary forces on TAS2R. Specifically, T2R receptors are found in the enteroendocrine cell line, STC-1 which uses a calcium related signalling pathway.

3. A fact of note is that human changes in diet, avoidance of toxins, and use of fire has led to relaxed constraint in the evolution of bitter taste. This has led to continued negative evolution that has caused a reduced sensory capacity in humans when compared to other species. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wodarcyk.5 (talk • contribs) 23:45, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Missing ?
One thing seems to be missing: why do some foods taste pleasant to one person, but utterly disgusting to another ? Darkman101 (talk) 17:16, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Fat Tasting
Primary references were added to present the potential for fat tasting, and the subject was expanded upon to make more evidence and research in support of fat tasting known. Three membrane proteins shown to have some role in fat tasting were presented. Pjuviler (talk) 10:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

umami as a "taste"
If "umami" is handled at all, it should be in a separate section and qualified as entirely speculative or unsubstantiated.

There are currently no references indicating that "umami" (or "drug-enhanced") is an actual flavor. It should certainly be removed from the technical parts of the article. For example, "umami" is listed in the intro describing taste buds, except there has been no documentation of "umami" taste buds and no demonstration of sensing of "umami" as a discrete taste in the manner of sweet, sour, salty and bitter (or sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent).

My suggestion is that the descriptions of "umami" be moved to the "umami" section. There are references that describe "umami" and while the sources avoid the direct taste issue, they can be used to support a description of "umami" as a raw concept within Wikipedia standards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unitacx (talk • contribs) 04:03, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

So what exactly is "bitter"?
Generalizing, "sweet" is related to ketone or aldehyd groups, "sour" is acidity, "salty" is Na+ ions, umami depends on amino acids, but what ligand(s) is/are "bitter"? -- megA (talk) 16:38, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Bitter is a catch-all for all other foods that your body thinks might potentially be poisonous, therefore if it's not a variant of sweet or salty, you generally tend to avoid it. Bush6984 (talk) 19:02, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Add to Taste article???
We learned about this in a psych of sensation/perception course I took, but I don't have the textbook or other resources to cite for credibility. However, this information seems like it could be helpful to add to the article. If anyone wants to reword and/or format it in a way that might look good, then put it on the active article, go for it. I just don't feel like it's quite ready yet in its current form. It might fit best in the Basic tastes, or Measuring relative tastes sections. ...

Unlike perceptions of pain or smell (olfaction), and other senses, taste is the only special sense that is not acquired/learned, but that is innate at birth. This serves an evolutionary survival role:
 * 1) saltiness: sodium or potassium ions - is needed for cellular function
 * 2) sweetness: sugar, organic compounds which can be converted to glucose - for sustenance/energy
 * 3) sourness: acidity/concentration of hydrogen ions - to not throw off the pH of our body/cells
 * 4) bitterness: a catch-all for all other types of molecules - to avoid any unknown poisons/toxins that might be deadly

Bush6984 (talk) 21:43, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Oleogustus
Not sure if this should be listed as one of the basic tastes, as the study's author claims it is, or mentioned under the "Fattiness" and/or "Recent discoveries" subsections, but it probably should be in the article somewhere. Various degrees of sources: http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/07/02/chemse.bjv036.short http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q3/research-confirms-fat-is-sixth-taste-names-it-oleogustus.html http://www.npr.org/2015/08/02/428643391/oleogustus-is-the-newly-discovered-taste-and-boy-is-it-bad Mapsax (talk) 14:10, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This is interesting, but we probably ought to wait and see whether the finding is approved by secondary sources (i.e., review papers). Looie496 (talk) 17:15, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * NB: Oleogustus, whose draft was created (not by me) after I posted the above, and which has already been added to Template:Taste.... Mapsax (talk) 00:24, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Merger proposal
In an AfD that was just closed, the closing admin recommended that we discuss a merger of Oleogustus with this article. So here is my proposal: Merge Oleogustus to Taste.

Rationale: The article Oleogustus is based on a single scientific paper, published this July and not yet cited by anyone, that has attracted enough attention from the press to make it notable. However, that doesn't mean that a separate article is the best thing for Wikipedia. Restrict web searches to before 2015, and you can build a similar dossier of press articles for kokumi (,,,, etc.), carbohydrates, and so on. You could have a separate article for each, claiming that it is the sixth flavor, and leave readers with different impressions depending on how they got to Wikipedia (and which one would we link sixth taste to?); or you can put them all together in one article and let the reader see all the claims together, as well as the common criteria for what constitutes a taste. I think that would be more encyclopedic. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree we should merge. I'm happy to have a first go at this if no objections arise. Bondegezou (talk) 09:16, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have now done this. Bondegezou (talk) 13:30, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Gustatory system
Duplicate scope. One means "Taste system". One is titled "Taste". Large amount of duplicated content. No sense needlessly fragmenting this topic - easier for readers if in a single article. Tom (LT) (talk) 07:18, 27 November 2015 (UTC) I also think that we should merge it. Readers have to know more information related to taste instead of going to another website. I agree. User:supermax2424
 * Agreed So Tom (LT), if you are up for it and as there has been no opposition and more than a month has passed since you first proposed it, I encourage you to go ahead and perform this merge, then turn the title of the other article into a redirect or nominate it for deletion.  "Make it so."   KDS 4444  Talk  04:53, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

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Sweetness
Sweetness of lactose is listed as .3 in this article, but .16 in the Sweetness article. I would add a verify to the page but I personally don't know how. 204.120.173.252 (talk) 18:25, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

New section System overview
Have placed this at the end of the page before Clinical significance. This section was recently added by a new editor who clearly hadn't looked into the Wiki guidelines. The references provided are not entered up correctly and some may not even be suitable; there is a repetition of certain bits of information; there is a lot of content completely uncited; the diagram provided is by the editor and there are no refs given to back up the information. Have placed this section further down, still keeping the heading but treating it more as a summary. The section is in real need of attention. No links at all are provided and it is quite badly written up. But there may be useful content to retrieve. Let's see if it can be made good. Or it may be felt that it should be removed for improvement first as before the addition the page was B rated. --Iztwoz (talk) 19:58, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Umami
The taste known as umami is a sensation of salt, it doesn't belong in this article, unless this is a place for culinary hype. I suggest that a reference or comment to umami would suffice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.69.202.145 (talk) 14:11, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Reliable source citations say otherwise, and Wikipedia needs to follow what reliable source citations say. Bondegezou (talk) 10:01, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Pathways
Regarding this figure in the section Taste: --Nø (talk) 11:56, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I do not understand why e.g. "Filiform papillae" are not shown connected to the tongue (where they reside according to Lingual papillae).
 * The Lesser palatine nerve is shown leading to the Nasal cavity, but the pathway seems to end there. I imagine it should somehow continue to the brain.

What is up with the quality of this article?
Seriously compare this version from 2014 to the article as it is now. currently it is much much less information dense than the 2014 edition. Is this like super subtle vandalism? can someone less lazy than myself revert it? has to be done manually... 136.32.74.144 (talk) 00:38, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

First paragraph of "functional structure" section -- overly generalized (and potentially innacurate)
"In the human body a stimulus refers to a form of energy which elicits a physiological or psychological action or response. Sensory receptors are the structures in the body which change the stimulus from one form of energy to another. This can mean changing the presence of a chemical, sound wave, source of heat, or touch to the skin into an electrical action potential which can be understood by the brain, the body's control center. Sensory receptors are modified ends of sensory neurons modified to deal with specific types of stimulus, thus there are many different types of sensory receptors in the body. The neuron is the primary component of the nervous system, which transmits messages from sensory receptors all over the body." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beanstash (talk • contribs) 00:01, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Saltiness
Cesium... really? is this hypothetical? or are you talking about a cesium salt because I wouldn't want to be the guy who got to test what metallic cesium tasted like. I'm not editing because I don't know and don't care enough. I just thought talking about the taste of a highly reactive element like cesium was kinda humerus. Unknown user: WP:BE BOLD. But do you mean radioactive, like Caesium-137, rather than "highly reactive"? Caesium 22:49, 4 May 2021 (UTC)