the role of saliva in taste

Saliva Experiment #1: No Saliva, No Taste!

Stick your tongue out and dry it with a paper towel and then put on a few grains of salt or sugar on it. Can you taste it? You should not be able to.

Now put your tongue back inside your mouth and let your saliva cover it. Can you taste it now? You should be able to taste it as soon as it gets wet with saliva.

Saliva Experiment #2: Sweet Bread

You'll need a piece of white bread, the cheaper the better. Rip a piece off and start chewing. What does it taste like after 1 minute? What about after 3 minutes? What about after 5?

It should start to taste sweet.

What does this tell us about saliva?

Saliva fulfils 2 functions. Firstly it helps the food molecules dissolve so that we can taste them. We cannot taste without the food dissolving into the saliva first, and we need to taste our food because taste tells us important things about whether the food is good for us, or poisonous.

Secondly, saliva contains enzymes which start the process of breaking down the complex bonds in the foods so that it can be digested. This is what starts to happen with the bread after it has been chewed for a few minutes. The saliva starts to break down the complex starchy molecules into simple sugars which taste sweet.