What Is the Relationship Between Tasting & Smelling?

Likely you have noticed that when your nose is blocked due to a head cold or other illness, you can hardly taste anything. Chefs must have a strong sense of smell to understand ingredients and combine them for a meal. This is because 90 percent of what we perceive as taste is actually because of smell. The two senses of taste and smell are very closely related and without both, a person would not be able to experience flavor and enjoy food.

Sense of Smell

• Anything with a smell releases molecules that evaporate in the air. These molecules bind to the chemoreceptors in your nose, triggering an olfactory receptor. Thousands of these receptors each detect a different odor. An electrical impulse is then sent to the brain where odors are organized. A specific gene encodes each receptor, so a person lacking a gene would also be missing the receptor needed to bind that unique odor and would not be able to detect the smell.

Sense of Taste

• Food dissolves into molecules and ions as it is eaten which are called tastants. The taste buds on the tongue each have taste cells which detect the five primary tastes of salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami, a response to glutimac acids. Receptors on each taste cell admit ions into the cell for sweet and salty tastes or bind molecules for the other tastes. A sensory neuron is linked to each taste receptor. These communicate to the brain, causing the sensation of taste.

Relationship Between Taste and Smell

• What we refer to as taste is actually a combination of taste, smell, touch and other factors such as temperature. All together these sensations create flavor. As we eat, our taste buds' receptions also react to a food's odor and both the taste and smell combined allow us to identify what we are eating. Lacking a sense of smell, we would be able to tell sweet from bitter, but we would not be able to recognize flavors. We therefore wouldn't be able to tell the difference between foods.

Disorders

• Hypogeusia, the most common taste disorder, is a decreased sense of taste while ageusia is a disorder where the person has a total lack of taste reception. Hyposmia is a reduced sense of smell and anosmia involves a complete lack of smell. Loss of taste is rare and what is perceived by a loss of taste is often actually a loss of smell. Smell and taste disorders can make a person more susceptible to diseases such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease because of the malfunctioning chemosensory functions.