Taste Buds And The Tongue
I read a long time ago that without a sense of smell that we can only tell if something is sweet or sour, but then I just came across an article saying that different tastes can be detected on all parts of the tongue by taste buds, and it would seem that the tongue can detect four different kinds of tastes and not just two.
But surely smell is important too, because I, and I imagine many others too can almost taste food by just the smell of it.
Can somebody please throw some light on this, and perhaps take me out for a meal and explain it in greater depth 
About 80% of what you think you are tasting, you are actually smelling.
It’s actually possible to taste without having smell, but the taste is very bland and this is because the odor molecules that we take into our mouth travel up our nasal cavity to the brain where the brain decrypts it.
So technically speaking, your brain is actually doing all the work.
Have you ever noticed that if you think that you are smelling something, that you can actually taste it, too?
Sometimes when I really want to eat something, such as a BLT or a tuna melt, I think about how it smells, and I can pretty much taste it, too.
This is from memory, and the brain is going through these transactions, in the same way that it would if the food were really in front of you.
Why Do Diffrent Foods Taste Different?
Your tongue and the roof of your mouth are covered with thousands of tiny taste buds and when you eat something, the saliva in your mouth helps break down your food which in turn causes the receptor cells located in your tastes buds to send messages through sensory nerves to your brain, and your brain then tells you what flavors you are tasting.
Everyone’s Tastes Are Different And Change As You Get Older.
When you were a baby, you didn’t just have taste buds on your tongue, but on the sides and the roof of your mouth as well which meant that you were very sensitive to different foods.
But as you grew older, the taste buds began to disappear from the sides and roof of your mouth, leaving taste buds mostly on your tongue.
So as you get older your taste buds become less sensitive, and you’ll most likely enjoy foods that you thought were too strong as a child.
Some Sense-sational Facts
We have almost 10,000 taste buds inside our mouths; even on the roofs of our mouths.
Thanks for all that information guys!
There’s so much information bandied around about this.
My first visit here but I’ll be back
Yes, the taste receptors are located in different part of the thoungue. You can make a small experiment by touching different parts of your thong with a little bit salt or sugar on your finger, and you will find that the sense is not the same in each area.