Without taste buds you may not be able to sense the taste of your favorite food in the restaurant. It is only these tiny organs that allow you to experience the pleasure of delicious food. Sweet, salt, sour and bitter are some of the basic tastes sensed by your tongue. You can see several minute bumps on the tongue, which are known as papillae and each of them contain taste buds. Papillae is located not only on the tongue but on the soft palate of the oral cavity, the esophagus (upper region) and on the cheeks and epiglottis. Each adult has 10,000 taste buds which die gradually (every two weeks) to get replaced by fresh ones.
Taste buds contain microscopic hairs known as microvilli which are responsible for sending signals to the brain to identify the taste of the item placed into your mouth. As you grow old, not all the taste buds can be replaced with fresh ones. So it is quite possible for an old person not to identify certain taste immediately. Often the number of taste buds gets reduced by half as one becomes old. If you are a smoker, then chances are high that your taste buds number diminishes day by day.
Nose plays a vital role in determining the taste of each food you eat. Olfactory receptors are made of special cells to smell the food and it is the ones that send signals to the brain conveying the taste of particular food. As you start eating, food particles present in the mouth triggers the release of certain chemicals which in turn induces the olfactory receptors. Taste buds present in the tongue together with the olfactory receptors sends messages to the brain creating particular flavor of foodstuff. That is the reason why you are not able to sense any taste of the food when you have runny nose. The taste buds are capable of detecting 5 different flavors namely, sweet, salt, sour, bitter and savory.