Taste, taste, baby...

Hey, hope everyone's enjoying their weekend.

I LIVE for my weekends - grad school is grad school, but the weekends are a time for me to decompress from the stresses of the week and enjoy some time with MOH, my pets, and get some me time. This weekend's adventures entailed driving MOH to different comic book stores in the Orange County region to find his precious Green Arrow comics.

The highs of Comic-Con have not worn off for us, and MOH's decided to get back into comic collecting. I don't mind driving MOH around, and even feeding into his new hobby (it's really cute when you get to experience how excited someone can get over comics, or in general with something they're passionate about, and MOH is no different). Everything aside, one great thing about running around town, especially to places we don't go to often, is to try new places to eat! We've heard so many great things about this little bakery called Cream Pan in Tustin, and it did not disappoint.

We decided to order the strawberry croissant because there's so much YELP-mania on it, and for good reason. What makes a great croissant? For me, a croissant must be flaky to the bite, buttery and lightly salted. This croissant, per Chandler Bing, "was perfection." Everything about it was delicious. You got the fat croissant, creamy (yet light) sweet custard, and tart strawberries to cut into the custard and croissant really well. At the register, there was a man before me that ordered two plastic trays of the strawberry croissants (they're a little smaller than the palm of your hand), with each tray containing maybe 10 croissants. I'll admit, I was a bit judge-y but after biting into my croissant in the car and scarfing it all before leaving the parking lot, I'm not passing judgement anymore!

Probably the best food on anyone's list of must-eats is composed of food that has managed to tickle a combination of our taste buds, whether it's a sea salted caramel yogurt, apple-bacon donuts, or even the nostalgic warheads! 

Fluorescent taste buds (Tizzano et al., 2008, BMC Neuroscience)

Taste buds don't just let us enjoy flavor, but initiate our gut for absorption of food (including the release of food-specific digestive enzymes and trigger our gut to make reflexive contractions). So how exactly do we sense taste? Well, remember how I told you taste buds have numerous cells packed together? Our taste buds contain multiple cell types (at least 4 known cell types). Each cell type is different in its own way, and has different receptors, or binding sites for food molecules to bind onto. Think of it like a lock and key fit, as in a sweet compound binds onto the sweet receptor in the taste bud. This method of detecting flavor is how we sense sweet, bitter and umami - salty and bitter molecules have the ability to pass straight through the cell for flavor detection, and thus, bypasses the need to bind onto a receptor.

Breakdown of the different types of cells that compile our taste bud! Each taste bud contains various different cells that have receptors for the 5 flavors (from Chaudhari and Roper, 2010)

After flavor molecules hit the taste buds, this activation leads to stimulation of gustatory nerves that send the food information to the brain for further processing.

Adapted from Merck Manual.com

So next time you're getting your foodie on, take time to appreciate just how delicious food can be! I know I'll be enjoying MOH's sea salted brownies! It's something that we definitely take for granted, especially considering how taste buds don't have the ability to regenerate as much when we get older.

Until next time, happy eating everyone!



The science in this blog comes from a comprehensive review of taste buds and how they signal taste information to the brain: Chaudhari and Roper, 2010, The cell biology of taste (Journal of Cell Biology).