a few years ago. In Salt Sugar Fat, I pointed out how the tongue map we learned in school had been misinterpreted to show that we tasted sweet only on the tip of our tongue, and how, in reality, we sense sugar everywhere on the tongue. But sugar’s ability to alert and excite the brain and drive us to want and like food now appears to be far greater. In recent years, researchers have learned that the cells on our tongue absorb sugar themselves, drawing it right through their cell walls, which raises the specter that they are part of the mechanism that informs the brain of the fuel in our food.
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