Sweetness Lab Reflection

     In this lab, we tasted different carbohydrates to test their sweetness. We found that the monosaccharides, like fructose and sucrose, were a lot sweeter than the polysaccharides were. Fructose is used as a sweetner and sucrose is found in fruit which explains why they were the sweetest carbohydrates out of the eight that we tried. Some of the disaccharides, like galactose and maltose, were slightly sweet but not as sweet as glucose or fructose. The monosaccharides were granular, while the disaccharides and the polysaccharides were powdery. Lactose is found in milk, which is not very sweet. The starch was very bland and not sweet at all. 

    Humans taste sweetness through the taste buds on their tongue. The taste buds send messages to the brain telling us whether what we are tasting is sweet or not. According to Popular Science, people who have lots of papillae on their tongues may find some flavors overwhelming. The taste buds on our tongue detect different molecules. The strength of this ability varies in different people because of evolution. The ancestors of someone who is more sensitive to bitter tastes probably would have developed different receptors depend on the plants they ate at that time.