Sweetness Lab

 In this lab our group tasted different types of carbohydrates and gave each a rating based on the taste. Before doing the lab, we researched the function and the structure of each carbohydrate and labeled them as either monosaccharide, disaccharide, or polysaccharide. We made predictions about whether they would be sweet or not.
 After giving each carbohydrate a rating, there was a relationship between the level of sweetness and the amount of rings found in the structure. The ones with less rings, the monosaccharides and disaccharides, such as fructose and sucrose tasted sweeter than the ones with more rings, the polysaccharides, such as starch and cellulose.
This relationship does seem correct because fructose  and sucrose are used as sweeteners that are found in many foods. They are used in juices and sweet snacks. It also makes sense that cellulose and starch are bland because they are not usually used in foods, but are used to make material and make up the structure of plants.
According to this article on the sense of taste, Humans use taste buds which are made up of taste receptor cells. These receptor cells are stimulated by chemicals and through action potentials, the signal is transferred to the brain as taste. Receptor cells are specialized to detect certain tastes like sweetness or bitterness. The tasters in our lab rated each sample based on how sweet it was. The tasters could tell if one sample was sweeter than another because there were more sweetness molecules in the sample that bound to the sweetness receptors on the tongue.