[HN Gopher] Salt Taste Is Surprisingly Mysterious
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Salt Taste Is Surprisingly Mysterious
Author : Tomte
Score : 12 points
Date : 2023-09-15 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago)
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| r0m4n0 wrote:
| Also, salt is the only mineral humans consume in raw form!
| badtension wrote:
| What about iodine?
| hinkley wrote:
| > But the real number is actually six, because we have two
| separate salt-taste systems. One of them detects the attractive,
| relatively low levels of salt that make potato chips taste
| delicious. The other one registers high levels of salt--enough to
| make overly salted food offensive and deter overconsumption.
|
| I can imagine a future scenario where, in the interests of public
| health, someone figures out how to transliterate the 'too much
| salt' genes to 'too much sugar' genes.
|
| Of the various ways that I could see human augmentation play out
| for the better rather than the worse, I'd rank that right behind
| tetrachromacy and hypoxia genes (particularly for Martians and
| Lunatics)
| satvikpendem wrote:
| One must be careful when editing the germ line. Imagine that
| your gene changes were propagated but a disaster befalls the
| planet such that calories are now scarce as had been dozens of
| millennia ago. Those who couldn't eat enough food or consume
| enough sugar-based calories could die out, and if there are
| enough of those kinds of people among the population, the
| population size could reduce significantly.
| koolba wrote:
| > I can imagine a future scenario where, in the interests of
| public health, someone figures out how to transliterate the
| 'too much salt' genes to 'too much sugar' genes.
|
| Doing it for the masses "for their own good" is quite
| dystopian. But doing it for yourself is easy and no gene
| therapy is required. Just cut out sweet foods and after not too
| long normal foods like bread will taste sweet, and sweetened
| foods will taste unnaturally toxic.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| "simple" and "easy" are very much not the same thing.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Also making different choices is not the same thing as what
| the OP suggested.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| I always wondered if it is the sodium or the chlorine that
| triggers the flavor. Unfortunately licking raw sodium would
| explode and elemental chlorine is a gas that burns - \ _ ( tsu )
| _ / -
| hinkley wrote:
| Potassium chloride tastes a lot like salt, but not exactly.
| Which I think means that it's some sort of 80/20 ratio.
|
| Also one of my favorite science thought experiments from the
| last few years: What ~~does hydrogen~~ do protons taste like?
| stouset wrote:
| Hydrogen _ions_. More specifically, protons.
|
| Spoiler (rot13): Lbhe fbhe erprcgbef qrgrpg npvqf. Npvqf ner
| zbyrphyrf juvpu unir serr cbfvgvir ulqebtra vbaf (nxn
| cebgbaf). Cebgbaf gnfgr fbhe.
| hinkley wrote:
| I knew there was something wrong with that phrasing, thank
| you.
|
| Turns out they taste like burning (acid, in particular).
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > Potassium chloride tastes a lot like salt
|
| Not at all, it's disgusting. The idea of replacing NaCl with
| it is laughable.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's not though? I can't really tell the difference at
| normal food salt levels.
|
| For people with hypertension it's a fantastic replacement.
| Or even if you're concerned about low potassium.
|
| I mean, Morton sells it as salt replacement in little salt
| shakers in the grocery store. It's pretty mainstream.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| I don't think that question makes sense. This is like asking
| whether the H or the O makes water wet: It's the combination.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Except that NaCl dissolves into sodium and chloride ions in
| water. in any context in which you are actually tasting it,
| you are not tasting NaCl, you are tasting some combination of
| Na+ and Cl-, at which point, asking which (if either) is the
| one driving the experience.
| janci wrote:
| Somebody tried to find out:
| https://youtu.be/RJh9yTIBY48?si=7YWV6WbZ3mAWE0Si
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Ions are very different to the atomic form. For instance copper
| is the familiar red-brown metal. Cu2+ ions though, are blue and
| dissolve in water. Clearly they are entirely different species.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Still kinda disturbs me that scientists will routinely do some
| kind of genetic or other biological modification of say, a mouse,
| and then when the results are in, simply kill the animal and
| dispose of it.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| This is why we worry about robot take over, it's because we're
| assholes, we worry we'll create bigger, better assholes.
| hinkley wrote:
| We talk about which scientists we should put in charge of AI
| and I think that's all wrong. The self-preserving question is
| which _philosophers_ should we put in charge? And which group
| of developmental psychologists should be auditing their work?
|
| Teach
|
| your children well
|
| Their father's hell did slowly go by
|
| Feed them on your dreams
|
| The one they pick's the one you'll know by
|
| ...
|
| And know they love you
| satvikpendem wrote:
| What else can they do with them?
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(page generated 2023-09-15 23:00 UTC)