SciShow Tangents - Taste

Episode Date: December 4, 2018

Have you ever wanted to lick the Moon and find out what that grey dust tastes like? If so, you’re in luck. This week, we’re sampling the science of taste, from the Apollo 16 mission reports to how the flavor compounds in amniotic fluid may affect babies’ food preferences. Apparently, it can get garlicky in there. But can non-human animals develop a sense of taste? And is “pine mouth” a real thing, or is it just what happens when Hank eats mysterious seeds he finds in the forest?

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the LightLeaks competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen today. As always, we are joined by Stefan Chin. What's your tagline? Victory Royale. We've also got Sam Schultz. Oh, shoot. That's mine.

Sari Reilly is here as well on the science couch with me. Yikes. Is your tagline? It's my tagline. And I'm Hank Green. Pain in the shrek okay we're all having a bad week

it sounds like yeah so every week here on SciShow Tangents we get together and try to one up amaze and delight

each other with science facts and we are playing for glory but we are also playing for Hank Bucks that is how we are keeping score

they are Hank Bucks but I only get access to them once I... It seems like I should have them. It doesn't really make any sense, but... What are you talking about? It just seems like I should... If they're Hank bucks, I should get them.

I don't need... You're like the mint. You mint the currency. Right, but the mint doesn't get to have infinite money. George Washington didn't get to have as many dollar bills as he ever wanted. That's for sure. You're just going to fake your head of this enterprise. Yeah.

Okay. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but because of who we are, that is, and also the name of the podcast, that is an impossible to achieve goal. But if somebody on the podcast wants to go on a tangent, they got to give up one of their Hank Bups. Or go negative. Now, as always, to introduce this week's topic, with the traditional science poem, we have Sam. There once was a man named

Ikeda, and dashi broth he loved to seva. When he discovered that kombu made new flavors come through, he said, umami's what I'll call this flavor. That was a, I did a Sarah, you wanna know why? is what I'll call this, flavor. I did a theory. You want to know why? Because it has a science fact in it. Did you explain it wrong?

Yeah, explain your science fact. Kikune Ikeda was a chemist at Tokyo Imperial University. So you didn't just make up a name that rhymed with flavor. No, no. And in 1908 he discovered that the addition of kombu in the broth he was eating for dinner. What's kombu? Is it like kombucha? It's seaweed, I think, right?

Yeah, it's seaweed. It's like dry Japanese. Is it kombucha? No. No. It probably has nothing to do with kombucha. I know that it's seaweed. Well, he was eating broth for dinner and it had extra kombu in it. And he was like, this is extra good. And he called the new flavor umami. And he discovered through science, because he was a chemist, that monosodium glutamate

also known as msg was the culprit to the flavor and then he developed a way to like condense it so so umami is like msg flavor it's part of the msg flavor well then that sounds great to me yummy i'm a fan of msg i gotta say yeah i read while i was looking this up that the msg like makes you feel bad thing is not true. Oh, yeah. They've never been able to replicate it. I'm going to spend a hank back on this, but I think this is like a very cool sociology

thing. I think it's part of when there was a lot of scare towards Asian American people, especially like Japanese and Chinese. They were like, oh, MSG is in Chinese food and we're afraid of the alien people in America. So we're going to block list MSG as a bad flavor and unhealthy for you. It apparently appears in other ethnic foods, but we don't care. We don't think about it that way. I mean, is it is that something that it also appears in like non-ethnic foods?

Yeah. appears in like non-ethnic foods like tomatoes yeah uh is was it something that was done intentionally or was that just sort of like it it snowballed a little bit i think it snowballed yeah um i'm not entirely sure beyond that like that that was the extent of my fun fact so i guess but i think when it was like especially used as an additive in chinese food and so right because of that people hyper focused on it and was like... That, unfortunately, makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So kombu is,

in Japanese, kombucha, is made from kombu kelp. So that is, kombucha directly translates to kombu kelp tea. Wow. I've already learned more than I've ever learned

in any episode. That was a great science poem. I like, you know, limericks are good because then you're done you know it was actually really hard but i like writing a limerick because then i know when i'm done that's whereas with a normal poem i'm like i guess i'm done yeah i guess is a rhyme scheme a thing i'm not really sure i could i could do another stanza. So our topic of the week is taste. It's not kombucha or MSG. No.

It is taste. So flavors, taste buds, the mechanism of taste, how things taste, etc. Do we need to explain to the audience what taste is? Tongue chemistry. Basically, yeah. When I was reading about this, apparently there's a difference between taste and flavor oh according to people

my poem is invalid well all my facts related to flavors too but taste is specifically tongue chemistry so anything from your tongue to your brain but then flavor can also involve mouthfeel.

So like chalky mouthfeel or smells like odors. So the flavor, you'd say like, this wine has a flavor and also a taste. I know that, I think we've talked about on SciShow that like your sight also plays a role in taste and flavor or one of those. Now I'm not sure which term to use. But maybe taste too. I mean, it ends up being surprisingly subjective, all of this stuff.

And when you start to get into the science of taste and of flavor, which we do sometimes specifically for wine, because this seems to be something that we care about the flavor of the most of anything for whatever reason, because that's what we've decided. That when things that shouldn't matter, matter, like the color of the glass you're drinking out

of. But also, even for people who are like super expert sommeliers, when it comes down to it, they're like once you get to a certain level, you're like it's not that different once you get in. Like once a wine is nice, they can taste different. But like whether it's good or bad has much more to do with your subjective taste than it has to do with anything objective. So a wine that costs $1,200 might be to you just as enjoyable as a 50 wine yeah or or to me as enjoyable as a five dollar wine yeah they all taste the same to me but chemically taste is just uh we have a certain number of receptors in our mouths that different kinds of molecules can bind to and they send uh different signals and there are not very many of them. There's just like the sweet, sour, bitter.

Umami. Salty. And salty and umami. I forgot about salt. How could you forget about salt? It's great. It's the best one. What is sweet without salt, you guys?

It is the best one when you're old. I don't like sweet stuff anymore. You know what I like is like salty sweet stuff. I literally like crack salt onto cookies now. Get out of here. You know what I like now that I'm disgusted by it that I like it?

Black licorice. What's wrong with me? I'll never like black licorice. What would kid me say about that? Just be like, ew, I'm going to be that someday? Wait, do none of you guys like black licorice? No. Oh, I'm old.

I'm an old man. Oh, no. You can take it from all the kids, though, when they don't want it from Halloween. Well, that's the great thing about liking black licorice is that it's always around. Yeah, nobody wants it. It's like every jelly bean that's left at the bottom. I like nice black licorice. Not like jelly bean black licorice?

Not like jelly bean black licorice. Not like jelly bean black licorice. Is there a difference? They're all bad. Well, we can do a whole episode about it. Yes, there is a difference. Okay, before we get too deep into the black licorice hole, it's time for...

Truth or Fail is the segment in which one of our panelists has prepared for us three science facts for our education and enjoyment. But two of them are lies. One of them is true. The other panelists have to figure it out either by deduction or wild guesses. And if you do get it right, you get a Hank Buck. And if we're wrong, Sari, who is hosting Truth or Fail this week, will get the Hank Buck.

So. Did I get a Hank Buck for my poem? Sure. Yes. All right, Sari, who is hosting Truth or Fail this week, will get the Hank Buck. So. Did I get a Hank Buck for my poem? Sure. Yes. All right, Sari. What do you got for us? Some really fun facts. Okay.

Number one. There's a marine invertebrate called Pyrrhuchilensis, also sometimes known as a living rock because it's all gray on the outside and has bright red flesh on the inside. It's true. It's very cool. Does it taste like licorice? No. It is a delicacy, though, because its blood has a high concentration of a substance called chalensin,

which binds to taste buds and makes sweet food taste spicy, kind of like the opposite of a miracle berry. Wait, what is this thing? Some kind of plant? It's a marine invertebrate. So it's an animal, but it doesn't have any bones and it just looks like very squishy and gross. It's a tunicate, I think. It's a tunicate, everybody.

That also not be real. Fact number two, one of the most prominent sources of coffee flavoring in chocolates and other things is actually mango pits, the big seeds in the center of mangoes you crack open the outside layer and roast to the inside and grind it up it tastes what has been described as sweet mellow and earthy and lingers longer than a normal coffee flavor on your taste buds why do i eat that what is it half caffeine no caffeine but it's just like

they should make decaf out of that because Because sometimes I'm like, decaf does not taste as good as caff. And then I'm sad for myself because I have to drink decaf. Because I freak out otherwise. It's not like a health thing. I just get way over the top. Yeah, I can't have caffeine either. I don't drink soda or coffee. Brain too much.

Brain too much. I never have brain quite enough. I need it. On fact number three, pine nuts, the tiny seeds that are in everything bagels or in pesto, can sometimes lead to a condition called pine mouth, which lasts for days to weeks in an extreme aftertaste situation. Because of an unidentified compound inside some of them, everything you eat tastes more bitter or metallic for that period of time.

I can see that one being true. I have a tangent to go on, but I'm going to do it after we answer. Yeah. I don't know. Huh. Does anybody have any opinions? Should we go over them again real quick?

Yeah, let's go over them again. So, number one, chalensin makes sweet food spicy. Number two, coffee-flavored mango pits. Number three, Pine Mouth. I feel good and strong about coffee-flavored mango pits because I

feel like the place where we get artificial flavors from is often natural, but different from the thing itself. Sure. But, like, at the same time, it's not like there's a shortage of coffee, but I guess it lingers longer. That's what I'm thinking.

Okay, I don't think it's that one. You don't think it's that one? I want it to be Pine Mouth. I think Pine Mouth sounds good to me too. Yes, this is what my tangent is about. But not to do with... Pine nuts or something. With pine nuts as we traditionally eat them.

Oh boy, I'm excited for this. This is something very ominous, what you did with With pine nuts as we traditionally eat them. Oh, boy. I'm excited for this. This would sound very ominous, what you did with these pine nuts. They all sound fake to me. Okay. I don't believe any of it. I think it's a trick question. I want it to be the rock. Yeah, me too.

Because that's like a really weird transformation of flavor to go from sweet to spicy. But I guess if you can transform other flavors, maybe you can transform all flavors. The problem I have with that one, and I feel like, I don't know, if I end up being wrong about this, I'm going to seem like a total dummy. But the problem I have with it is like the spicy receptor, I think, is just the pain receptor. The spicy receptor, I think, is just the pain receptor. Ooh.

And so to turn your pain receptors into something that can receive a sweet, I don't know. I guess it's possible. Maybe it reacts with your saliva in a way that creates a compound. Yeah. Now that I've said it, it could totally be possible because proteins can deform, man. Yeah. Deform. I feel like that one is not real. I'm going to go with pine mouth.

Yeah, me too. Ooh. I'll go with The Rock. Definitely going for The Rock. It was Pine Mouth. Pine Mouth! So before you explain Pine Mouth to us, I want to go on my tangent and spend the Hank Buck that I just made immediately on the time when I was out with Catherine hiking through the forest.

What did you eat? And I found pine nuts, what I thought were pine nuts. They looked exactly like pine nuts. what I thought were pine nuts. They looked exactly like pine nuts. Possibly they were pine nuts. And I put a handful of them in my mouth. So they're in a pine cone. I broke them in a pine cone. Pine nuts were in there. I was like,

pine nuts! Oh, I love pine nuts. They're super tasty. I put them in my mouth. Turpentine. I poured turpentine in my mouth and I tasted it for a day. Oh, no. Like I poured turpentine in my mouth and I tasted it for a day. Oh, no.

And so that made me think that maybe this was a true fact. Yeah, maybe you got It was so bitter. I don't know if I got something that wasn't pine nuts

or if you have to prepare pine nuts in a certain way before they're edible. I tried to look that up really fast. I was unable to. So I don't know

what I ate. But I always assumed that I ate pine nuts that just weren't roasted and had like all of the tried to look that up really fast i was unable to uh so i don't know what i ate but i always assumed that i ate pine nuts that just weren't roasted and had like all of the yeah like volatile chemicals burned out of them but i will say that i love pine nuts and that was terrible they're very expensive so finding a bunch of free pine nuts on the ground is really great kids don't just eat stuff in the forest. How old are you when you said that?

This was probably six years ago. Oh, boy. Too old. This was in Montana, so in the last 15 years. Sari, tell us about pine mouth. Yeah, pine mouth,

also known as pine nut syndrome. Definitely got that. Got PNS. Yeah, that's what it's abbreviated to. PNS in all the papers. But apparently, between July 2008 and June 2012,

the FDA received 501 consumer reports of prolonged taste disturbances after eating pine nuts. Just people calling and being like, what happened to my mouth because it can last i've had a prolonged taste disturbance that happens to me with splenda by the way i have a prolonged taste disturbance which is not unusual just like everything tastes sweet for like but how long six hours this is like up to four weeks like all your food just tastes shitty

the the interesting thing is it's not an allergy. Like they don't have any allergic responses to it. It doesn't seem to matter where the nuts came from. One species seems more likely to cause it. I think 75% of cases came from Pinus armandii, a white pine from China. And it's happened to people who have had pine nuts before with no adverse reaction. And it's just a mystery. Like they just eat pesto or eat some pine nuts on a salad one day and then their taste buds are all messed up for a really long time.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it deforms the protein. And like when you have a miracle berry, it lasts for a long time. And that's the thing that changes bitter to sweet in your mouth. Miracle Berry, it lasts for a long time. And that's the thing that changes bitter to sweet in your mouth? So there are three guesses that I found on the internet. They're all just from scientists that seem to have been interviewed. One of them is that it's a phantom taste caused by nerve damage of some sort. So we haven't found a neurotoxic agent in pine nuts, but it's possible that because of the way these particular nuts were

processed or like certain species could have some sort of nerve damaging agent that really messes with your taste buds. And so it like lasts until your taste buds regrow. Another idea proposed that the metallic taste is because of in your gut, there are bitter receptors similar to on taste buds, apparently. And some pine nuts may contain compounds that stimulate those receptors. And so they latch on. It goes back up to your mouth? I don't think it goes back up to your mouth. I think it's just like triggers the same things in your brain.

So like you have a constant bitter signal in your brain. And then one study on one patient, it was just like one 23-year-old patient, so I don't know how good this is, said that it might have to do with being a supertaster. So this person was a supertaster, which is that PTC phenylthiocarbamide, I wrote it down, is like a compound that some people find to be really bitter while other people find to be really tasteless. And so she got pine nut syndrome, pine mouth, and is also a super taster. So maybe people who are extra sensitive to bitter tastes have the opportunity to get their mouth really messed up.

There's a marine rock you can eat. It just tastes like iodine or soap. Oh, weird. And then I just made up the mango pit thing, but almond flavor comes from apricot, nectarine, and peach and plum pits. What the heck? That's crazy.

Can they make almond milk from that? Because I feel like there's too many almond trees in the world. I think they use it for most almond artificial flavoring just comes from that. So they probably could. Do you know, you might not know this,

and this is not a tangent exactly, but it might take a long time to talk about. Do you know, you might not know this and this is not a tangent exactly, but it might take a long time to talk about. Do you know if it's all or nothing with the pine mouth? I think it's all or nothing. Yeah. I feel like I've eaten pesto

that's made me be like, oh, now everything I'm eating tastes like garbage, but it didn't last like six days. So maybe I'm just making it up. Maybe. I think the short end of the spectrum is two-ish days.

So if it lasted for a little bit, then it could happen. Or you could have just eaten some bad pesto. I suppose that's possible. Bad pesto is Sam's new tagline for the episode. It might have been

pesto I made. I always find that pesto I make is not as good from pesto at the store. It's very hard to make, yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

I'm bad at it. Or my basil is just no good. Speaking of bad basil, let's head into our ad break. And we're back. I have zero points. I lost one talking too much about pine nuts. I have zero points. I lost one talking too much about pine nuts. Stefan has zero points. Sari, you got one point.

Sam, you got two. You guys are screwed. It's time for the fact talk, where Stefan and I have each brought a fact, an attempt to blow the other panelists' minds. The presentees, the people we're telling our fact to, both have a Hank Buck to award to the fact that they like the most. However, if both facts are a giant snooze,

you can choose not to award us any Hank Bucks and just throw them in the trash. And I'm ready to give mine, but I guess we have to decide who gives their fact by having some kind of taste-related thing. Are you a super taster? I am. Go first.

Okay. Great. When Apollo astronauts went to the moon, they unexpectedly got a bunch of moon dust stuck to them. It was really clingy, and it came into the lander with them, and that's not great. It's extremely fine,

and it clung to everything. But also, when they first entered the lander, it has smell and a taste. According to the Apollo astronauts, the moon dust smelled and tasted like burned gunpowder. So like fireworks. They were people who had fired guns a lot, so they knew what it smelled like. Of course, the moon doesn't have any gunpowder on it.

Here's the really weird part. Moon dust on Earth does not smell like gunpowder. It smells like nothing. So we can sniff moon dust. We have some here on the earth. So the thought is that some chemical reactions have happened to the dust in the presence of oxygen that removed the smell. And while the astronauts intended to bring back samples in vacuum sealed thermoses, the moon dust was so abrasive that all of the seals failed and the oxygen was let in. So there's no way for us to test what Moondust is really made out of.

And the Apollo taste and sniff tests are the only reason we know that we don't know. So it lost its stuff by the time it got back? That's right. Is Moondust toxic to humans? So it seems like it's abrasive. This is a really interesting story too. So they did, first of all, they did lick the moon.

Several of the Apollo astronauts totally licked it. Okay. How? They had to bring it inside. They didn't lick the surface of the moon. Once they brought it in the sky or something. You stood on a little chamber, a little tent, and you had to take off your spacesuit. And like, ah, blah, blah, blah.

But yeah, there was, they did lick moon rocks. They put the moon dust in their mouths. Did someone tell them to do that? I don't think so. Okay. I think that it was inadvisable. But it's so weird to think of the gung-ho stuff that they did. And whether it's toxic or not, it's abrasive.

And it irritated the nasal passages of one astronaut, but probably all of them. Because the only astronaut who reported hay fever-like symptoms from inhaling moon dust was the only non-pilot who was on the Apollo missions. He was the geologist. And the rest of them probably just didn't report it because pilots kind of have a culture of not telling you when something's going wrong with their bodies.

Trying to be tough, guys. Yeah. But the geologist is like, I sniffed some rock and it was bad. And actually said, when they were like, you were the only one who reported this? He was like, I was the only one who reported it.

The pilots, I also saw their eyes watering and their noses running. But yeah, so he had sort of like hay fever symptoms from the moon dust. Not too bad. Not too bad. All right. I'd lick the moon then. Yeah, they're all, you know, they live to normal ages.

What's it made out of? Is there stuff? It's mostly sand, mostly silicon dioxide. Right. So there's stuff on earth that if you sniffed it, you would hurt yourself too. Yeah. Yeah. Sucking any dust that could give you allergies.

Sure. Yeah, and so they think that probably once it hit oxygen, it started to like volatilize and some of these, you know, post gunpowders, like burned gunpowder smells started to form, but then they continued to oxidize until it was smellless. So we don't know the chem, we don't really know the chemistry of the moon. Right. Because all of it got contaminated with oxygen. So thoughts as to why

it smells and tastes like this are wide-ranging and they're only hypotheses and cannot be tested because all of their vacuum thermoses failed. All of them. Guys, get your stuff together. Don't put sand on the rim of your vacuum thermos. They probably thought that we'd be living on the moon by now,

so they didn't really care that much. All right, Stefan, what do you got for us? So bees, when they're flying around between different plants, can get exposed to pesticides that are on those plants. And there have been many studies done to show, or to try to show the effects of those pesticides on the bees. But those studies usually don't take into account what behavioral changes the bees might make

if they had a choice of food source. They're just like giving them pesticides a bunch of times. So in a recent study, this was published in August 2018, researchers gave 10 colonies of bees the option to feed from various feeders that had sugar laced with different concentrations of pesticides. And over the course of the experiment, they found that at first

they avoided them, but then they developed a taste for the contaminated sugar and began to consume that preferentially. So they're like, addicted to the pesticides? They're like, you know, it's like spicy food.

It hurts, but it's also kind of good. I kind of like being near death. Do you think that's really why they developed a taste for it? No. Okay. I don't know. I'm not a bee. I don't know what life is like.

But I do know that people like spicy food because the pain can actually give you an endorphin rush that you get a little addicted to. And you got to find spicier and spicier food. That's right. So the pesticide they used is one of the neonicotinoid pesticides, which is hotly debated, it seems like. It seems like most people are convinced that it is harming the bees, but some people are still doubtful. Especially people who make it. Yeah, you know. They've banned it in Europe. It's partially banned.

Oh, it's partially banned. In things that are not grown in greenhouses. Oh. Basically. But that ban will end eventually, so there's still a lot of debate about how we should handle this. Does it have nicotine in it? It's not nicotine,

but it's chemically similar to nicotine. So that's part of what they think is going on is that it is kind of, they're getting addicted to the pesticides. Can I go on a small tangent, which is that the other thing that I was looking at to possibly talk about, there wasn't a lot to say about it,

but I just thought it was weird that they have these digital lollipops. Oh, no. And so it doesn't look like a lollipop at all. It's like a circuit board, because these aren't commercial devices, so it's like these researchers have created this thing. So it looks like a circuit board with a little flap,

and you lick the flap, and using electrical signals, it stimulates different tastes. And so that combined with a Senti, I think is the name of it. And it, it's a little device that plugs into your iPhone and there's an app. And so you press like what scent you want and it puffs a thing out. So you can like do a sour taste on the lollipop and then say I want lemons on the scenty and then you get this like full flavor experience of

like eating a lemon but you're licking your phone but you're licking a little flap of conductive material that's really cool that is also a good fact can I give you my handbook for that sure didn't know we were preparing two That is also a good fact. Can I give you my handbook for that? Sure. Didn't know we were preparing two.

I'll give it to you as a B1, but it's secretly for the other one. I gotcha. I liked the moon. I heard the gunpowder thing before. I didn't know that it went away on Earth. Yeah. That was like new mysterious information. Yeah, the moon one is also very cool.

You get my handbook. All right. It is now time to ask the science couch where listeners send us questions and our couch of finely honed scientific minds will attempt to answer them. Hit me, Sam. All right. Kristen Stevens at K underscore M underscore Stevens asks, how does the food I grew up with or that my pregnant mom ate impact my taste preferences as an adult?

I'm going to toss this one straight to Sarah because I have no idea. Really? You know what? You can guess. I'm sure that, no, I can't. This one seems really complicated. I really don't. Certainly, I don't know what the food my mom ate has effects on me at all.

Sure, maybe. mom ate has effects on me at all like well so i could maybe see i'm not aware of any thing but i could see some sort of epigenetic pathway happening i can see it but you gotta do you gotta do research on it to make sure though and i'm not aware of any the other thing is like what food you were raised eating yeah i assume that you like you know like the first time i had kimchi i was like this is bad it hurts but i feel like a lot of kids also hate the food that they grew up yeah that's true i kind of feel like it might be random that's what i think it's all very complicated and so if there are any flavor scientists out there feel free to correct me because it seems like there's a lot of research into this oh really and it's like very complicated uh because it seems like there's a lot of research into this. Oh, really? And it's like very complicated

because it's like a whole mix of chemistry and psychology and whatever we know. But we do know that certain flavors get into the bloodstream and therefore get into breast milk and amniotic fluid. So while your fetus is still developing up in there, volatile compounds are also floating around things like vanilla and carrot and anise and garlic. And they found this through like studies. So they gave, for example, some pregnant women, not sure they how they obtained the amniotic

fluid in this study, but they like gave a couple of women garlic pills while they were pregnant and then got a sample of amniotic fluid from controls and not and had people sniff them and the ones that ate garlic smelled a little bit more garlicky. Oh my god. If you eat a bunch of just Italian food the week before you give birth, your water breaks and you're just like, what's that?

My baby smells so good. Is that somebody roasting garlic around here? Yeah. Can you eat so much spicy food that you hurt your baby? I don't think you can hurt them. We're not sure about capsaicin, like whether it gets into the amniotic fluid, but it is like bathing your fetus in it. So it's like all up in their nose and mouth and hitting their receptors. Happens with carrot juice, too.

This was not like a statistically significant correlation, but there was one. There are three groups of women in this study. One of them drank carrot juice consistently during pregnancy. One of them drank carrot juice consistently immediately afterward, so when they were breastfeeding. One of them didn't, just drank water. And the ones that drank carrot juice, their babies had a slight preference to eating mushy carrot food compared to like the other babies and i don't know when you study babies they like lick their tongues or blink their eyes and they're like this baby likes this thing uh which is it's just so hard to study babies and

then apparently babies are born with a preference for sweet and salty tastes so that's why we think that they have an aversion to some vegetables. Yeah. And it used to be like the biological need for sodium is a lot because we need it for muscles and nerves to fire.

And now it's just not scarce anymore. But we still have that holdover potentially for the preference. And then like you all were saying, there seems to be some sort of psychological exposure effect.

So in the same way, you can eat a bunch of spicy food over and over again and desensitize yourself to it almost or get used to it. You can do that with any food. But the weird thing is, is it can go all the way back to the womb, we think. Like you can start exposing yourself to flavors. So you could start already desensitized to a certain level of spiciness. yourself to flavors. So you could start already desensitized to a certain level of spiciness. Spiciness, question mark, but like definitely flavor profiles of different cultures. Right. So you maybe are predisposed to liking the food that you're going to be served in your culture. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think there's some, there's seems to be enough evidence that

if your mom is eating a thing or if your pregnant parent is eating a thing, then you will probably also enjoy that thing or at least be used to the taste. All right. I got to say thanks to people who sent us in your questions. Thanks to Drishta and a doomed cupcake. I was like, what does that say? It says a doomed cupcake. If you want to ask the Science Couch, you can tweet to us using the hashtag Ask SciShow. And with that, let's take a look at our final scores. I have one.

Stefan has one. Sari has one. Sam, you did it, my friend. You have two points. I told you, you guys were screwed. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's really easy to do that. You can leave us a review on iTunes. That's helpful and helps us know what you think about the show.

You can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. finally you could just tell people about us thank you for joining us this week i have been hank green i've been sari riley i've been stephen chin and i've been sam schultz scishow tangents is a co-production with wnyc studios our music is by joseph tuna and our art is by heroku matsushima our social media organizer is victoria bonjourno and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thanks, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted.

But, one more thing. The giant California sea cucumber has a mouth, but it uses its anus as a second mouth. Why? What? But can it taste through its mouth? That's great. Presumably as much as they have taste receptors on it. Can it poop out its mouth?

I don't know. But they learned by giving it radioactive in like not an unsafe way, but like little particles. And they found some around its mouth in that part. They found some around its butt. And so they were like, it must be sucking it up through its butt too. It wasn't just pooping it out? No, because there was like a higher concentration. Weird. As if it were sucking it in.

So it just goes up and then they're like, alright, and then it goes back down. Yeah. Sounds like it has two butt mouths. But I don't know. It has one butt mouth and one mouth mouth. Okay, good. Thanks for letting me.