So it seems like something we should all clearly know and understand – the difference between flavour and taste.
However, after asking a few people what they thought (video below), I realised that most people don’t know, or only have a vague idea. It’s not a problem of ignorance but more of not thinking about, or just taking for granted that we know all about it. For instance, remember that picture you saw in school of the different sections of the tongue and what taste receptors they had? Well, that picture is, and has always been, wrong.
It’s almost comical how billions of people have taken such simple things as fact. Makes me wonder what else we are getting wrong. I digress.
The difference between taste and flavour is that we experience 5 tastes: Bitter, sour, sweet, salty, and umami (savoury flavour, and newest kid on the block), and flavour is the what our smell receptors receive coupled with our five tastes.
Some people go a step further and say that texture and temperature also play a part but I’m not entirely convinced. That being said, I’m currently doing a test to see how pain affects our perception of taste, and the results are leaning towards the result that outside stimuli does play a part in what we perceive we are eating at a much more basic level than most of us will admit.