"That cereal tastes really sweet." as in many situations, vague adjectives were used in the preceding sentence to try to describe how sweet a given cereal tastes. Instead of forcing people to guess at how sweet "pretty sweet" is or how sour "pretty sour" is, I propose a unit of measure called the "Flavit" (Fv can be its abbreviation, assuming it's not already taken).

The scale of the flavit is 1 to 100, however I think it would keep things less confusing if the flavit is a measurement of all flavors at once. This means that if something is equally sweet and sour, it is 50fv sweet and 50fv sour. So, the 1 to 100 scale works like a percentage, rather than like measurements of tangible objects.

If something is slightly sweet, but contains no other flavors to bring the flavit measurement to 100, that substance can be measured as, for example, 10fv sweet and 90fv tasteless.

Note: The measurement for how hot a hot sauce is already exists. It is called the Scoville Unit and measures the amount of Capsaicin (the chemical that produces the hot sensation) in a substance.
-- Number9, Jan 23 2004

Flavour research group http://www.nottingh...vour/Flavgroup.html
[hazel, Oct 04 2004]

Flavour experiment http://www.nottingh...letter/pdfs/250.pdf
the bottom right hand corner of page 6 [hazel, Oct 04 2004]

These things are subjective. Some people perceive tastes differently from others. Tastes can interact to cancel each other out or have a synergistic effect. Eg try drinking orange juice after cleaning your teeth - it doesn't taste sweet any more, but that doesn't mean it's not sugary.

There is a measure of sweetness called Brix, but it's actually a quantitation of the amount of sugar rather than the perceived sweetness. To measure perceived tastes you need to train a sensory panel and have them assess your samples in a standard way.
-- hazel, Jan 23 2004


//try drinking orange juice after cleaning your teeth - it doesn't taste sweet any more// this is strange because I believe that chewing gum only tastes minty while there is sugar present.
-- po, Jan 23 2004


Some work that was done at Nottingham University showed that we only perceive chewing gum to lose its flavour after a while. The menthol is still being released but our taste buds switch off after a while. If you then drink or eat something sweet you can taste the mint again. I've linked to the group and I've found a brief description of the results.
-- hazel, Jan 23 2004


yep, Hazel. thats what I meant.
-- po, Jan 23 2004


I think sweet is one of the better understood of the five taste sensations, but still not well. The mechanism of taste is generally better understood that flavour perception which is really complex.

As you say [gray] flavour is a combination of taste sensations (perceived by the tongue), smell (perceived by olfactory epithelium, a part of the brain extending to top of nasal cavity) and also trigeminal sensations such as hot/cold/pain (eg chilli).
-- hazel, Jan 23 2004


Sorry, Fv is already the symbol for femto-vexibel (that is, 10^-15 vexibels.) Fishbone.
-- phundug, Jan 23 2004



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