Excess Sweetness?

Throughout the lab, my lab partner and I tasted various samples of starches, ranging from sucrose to cellulose. From the various samples, we ranked those by their degree of sweetness and noted their color & texture. After noting all those observations, we observed that the sugars, which were least complex by having only one ring, had the highest degree of sweetness. As the sugars have more rings, the less sweet those sugars are. Also, when my lab partner and I finished tasting the sugars, we noted how some of these sugars reflect how sweet they are in other foods. For example, I remembered how fructose is included in many soft drinks, such as Kool Aid and other drinks, which provided evidence that fructose should be sweet.

One way you can view tasting sweetness is as a key being inserted into a lock. According to NPR, the sugar simulates receptor cells on the outer tips of the taste cells when a person tastes something with a high level of sugar. The receptor cells then send signals to particular centers of the central nervous system that respond to sweet.

The different sugar samples my partner and I used are presented on this paper towel.