What Do Sweet Foods Taste Like When You Can’t Taste Sweetness?

Posted By elissa on Oct 31, 2010 | 2 comments

Salon.com’s Francis Lam decided to find out. He used Gymnema sylvestre – an herb used in Ayurvedic medicine to treat diabetes. Known as “Sugar Destroyer,” it can also alter the perception of sweetness when applied to the mouth/tongue.

So what did Lam discover? Here’s a sample:

Sugar: Like melting sand! The sensation of sugar crystals dissolving on the tongue with essentially no taste means we’re really in business. Though I do swear I can detect something stale and papery, which may say something about my subject acquisition methodology. That is, to steal a fistful of sugar packets from the deli downstairs.

Sweet’N Low: You know how there are people who can’t stand to be within five feet of artificial sweeteners because they think they’re so bitter? I’m not really one of those people, because I can suck down Diet Coke like it’s mother’s milk. But without its sweet mask, saccharine dissolves into a thick, metallic bitterness, one I’ve never really noticed before. Ick.

Milk: Sugar-destroyed milk was one of my favorite finds, not necessarily because it’s delicious (it’s not bad), but because of how many different flavors I found in it. At once sort of salty, savory, it has lots of subtle, interesting minerally and grassy characteristics, which make sense because, well, it’s full of minerals and cows eat grass. I had no idea sugar was so prominent in how I taste milk, and how much that sugar hides.

There’s more… click over and check it out.

I’m not aching to try this experiment myself… but for those who have a hard time resisting the lure of Halloween candy, it could be worth a shot. 😉