How Sweet Is It?

Today in class, we tried 8 different kinds of sugars in order to determine sweetness level. We made predictions beforehand and sucrose was used for scale at 100. I predicted that I would only taste sweetness in sucrose, glucose, and fructose. I think that the fewer number of rings indicates a higher sweetness level because the sugars with one ring typically had higher sweetness levels. Fructose, which I  personally found to be the sweetest, was structured with only one ring. I also noticed that the more chain-like the carbohydrate was, the more powdery the substance was. The more granular a carbohydrate was, the more sweet it was. I've seen many of the sugars that I've tasted in foods outside of the science classroom. For example, I have consumed high fructose syrup in bread and ketchup and other sweet foods. I have also had milk and ice cream, both of which contain lactose. Although I haven't had beer, the sugar maltose is used to process this alcoholic drink.

Have you ever wondered how people taste sweetness? Well, the consumed sugar triggers a sweet receptor protein and this sends a signal to the central nervous system. Sucrose, glucose, and fructose all have different sugar receptor pathways when signals are sent to the brain. The sense of sweet taste is actually closely linked to the endocrine or hormone producing part of the brain and nervous system area. Also, people have varying amounts of taste buds on the tongue. This will result in a differing amount of signals being sent to the brain when sugar is consumed.

Source:

How Does Our Sense of Taste Work? U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.