Let me set the scene: it’s the evening, I’m doomscrolling in bed (as is tradition), and a video from Emma Chamberlain pops up. She's slurping espresso with a “coffee expert” who confidently explains that this technique helps spray the coffee across different “taste zones” of the tongue: sweet at the tip, salty on the sides, bitter at the back, and so on. I sit up, wide-eyed, heart beating loud. Why? Because I’ve just witnessed a science myth that I’ve never encountered before in the wild.
Now, unlike the internet’s typical buffet of health misinformation (looking at you, celery juice cures cancer crowd), this myth won’t harm you (unless you count performing unnecessary espresso aerobics in public). But it’s a perfect example of how old scientific misconceptions live rent-free in our brains. So, let’s unravel this tongue-twister of a tale.
The Curious Case of Taste
The story of taste has ancient roots — like, Aristotle-level ancient. He categorized taste into seven types: sweet, bitter, sour, salty, astringent, pungent, and harsh. Over the centuries, other scientists joined the flavor party, each adding their own weird adjectives. Jean Fernel added “insipid” (a.k.a. no taste). Carolus Linnaeus threw in “nauseous” and “viscous,” which sound more like side effects than flavors.
But by the 1880s, scientists simplified the taste categories to four classics: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Later, “umami” (the savory taste) was added — thanks, Japan!
Then came David Hänig in 1901, a scientist whose work would accidentally become one of the most persistent science myths ever: the tongue map. Hänig mapped taste sensitivity on different tongue regions, and textbook illustrators everywhere took that idea and ran with it — without reading the fine print. His data actually showed minor sensitivity differences, but the map was exaggerated into a rigid “zones” chart that lives on in coffee videos and outdated PowerPoints.
Luckily, in 1974, Virginia Collins came to the rescue and showed that all tastes can be detected across the entire tongue. Boom. Myth busted. No matter how dramatically you slurp espresso, it’s all going to the same flavor-processing party.
How Your Tongue Really Tastes
Our tongues aren’t just wet flavor rugs. They’re covered in tiny wart-like structures called papillae, which are basically the tongue’s version of flavor amplifiers. There are three main types:
- Fungiform papillae: These are sprinkled all over, especially at the tip and edges. They're the multitaskers — handling taste, touch, and temperature.
- Circumvallate papillae: Big, round, and hanging out at the back like VIP bouncers, they contain thousands of taste buds each.
- Foliate papillae: Found on the sides near the back, looking like rows of ruffles.
Each of these papillae hosts clusters of taste buds, and inside each bud are sensory cells armed with “taste hairs.” These hairs stick out into a little pool of spit and grab on to chemicals from your food. Think of it like flavor fishing.
These sensory cells send messages via a relay system of cranial nerves, lighting up different parts of your brain — some conscious (like “Mmm, chocolate!”), others primitive (like “Spit out that battery, now!”).
Tongue Tied No More
In short: your tongue is a complex, democratic flavor sponge. All parts of it can detect all basic tastes, though some areas may be slightly more sensitive to certain ones. But there’s no need to swish your espresso like mouthwash.
The next time someone brings up the “tongue map,” you can smirk knowingly, and maybe even offer a toast to Virginia Collins, the unsung myth-busting hero of flavour science.
Sophie Tseng Pellar recently graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in the physiology program. She will be continuing her graduate studies in the surgical and interventional sciences program at McGill. Her research interests include exercise physiology, biomechanics and sports nutrition.
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