Most of what we think to be taste is actually our sense of s

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Most of what we think to be taste is actually our sense of smell. Is this true?

I don't know. It's what I was taught as a kid.

All I know is that my sensory processing problems mean that I can't smell most things, at all.

I never have a problem with taste, though.

It must be a perception problem.

If I'm eating something with a not too strong taste, and I can smell something else sometimes I can actually taste the other thing in my mouth instead or as well as what I'm actually eating. It's weird, but I think it means my sense of smell and taste are definitely connected. Whether this is the case with every human I don't know. I expect different people have different perceptions of what they can actually taste to each other.

Yes. The tongue only produces four taste sensations. The olfactory nerve gives all the subtle nuances.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 14 Nov 2012, 5:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

As others have already said, most of our sense of taste is smell.

In my case, I lost most of my sense of smell years ago. For a long time, nearly everything tasted pretty much the same. About the only exception was Indian food.

Over the last twenty years, some of my sense of smell seems to have returned. Or maybe I've just gotten better at distinguishing the smells of what gets through.

I also sometimes detect smells that others don't seem to detect. For example, I have woken up two of my brothers on occasion in the middle of the night to come over and see if they could detect strange odors, usually something like very hot wiring.

Same as my mother. She once lost her sense of smell for a couple of years and she could barely be bothered to eat as most foods had little to no taste and those that did have some flavour didn't taste right to her.

She also said that when cooking she couldn't smell the food cooking and that meant she had no appetite for it by the time she served it up either.

It can work to one's advantage though....
My OH (also Aspie) can't swallow anything that tastes/smells/feels 'wrong'.

On the other hand I can actually 'turn off' my sense of smell completely (I thought everybody could, but apparently I'm weird), which is useful when in the course of medical stuff I have to swallow foul things (I'm writing at lunchtime, so will avoid TMI issues....).

I have no sense of smell, so I can verify that most of what you "smellers" can "taste" is actually from your sense of smell.

I have no idea what "flavour" is. I only know salty, sweet, bitter, etc. and the different combinations. I rely heavily on texture when it comes to food.

For several years I relied mainly on texture and even today I still rely on texture more than anything else. If the texture doesn't match what the texture should be for the food in question, I can't eat it. If I already put it in my mouth, I am sometimes involuntarily spitting it everywhere in seconds.

Not long ago, someone gave me some banana nut bread. This particular banana nut bread was undercooked a bit and was far too moist. It lasted about two seconds in my mouth before I was spitting it out.

Very true. If you want to test it, grab a snack. Take one bite of it normally. Take the next right after smelling whatever you're eating. Take the third while pinching your nose shut.

Depending on what you're eating and how good your senses are, you could notice anything from a slight difference to a major one.