Toothpaste tastes good. Orange juice tastes good. So, why do they taste so bad when we put them together?
Let's start with a little science around how we taste. Our tongue is covered in taste buds that are designed to sense and translate 5 different flavors:
- Sweet
- Sour
- Salty
- Bitter
- Umami - a pleasant savory taste found in glutamates like MSG
While many of our meals combine different flavors, there are some that don't go together because of the chemistry involved. This usually means that the taste of one food is impacted by eating another food first.
The cells on our tongue have receptors designed to link up with specific food flavors. When we eat a salty food and it lines up with the salty receptors there is a match and we experience the taste of salt. Things get more complex when a prior food affects the receptors without activating them. The second food and receptor can match up, but the flavor is blocked. This is what happens when you try to drink a glass of OJ after brushing your teeth.
Many toothpastes contain sodium laurel sulfate, a type of soap that creates and disperses bubbles. These sudsy bubbles can block the receptors on our sweet sensing taste buds. So, when we drink that glass of orange juice, we only taste the bitter, acidic flavor, not the sweetness we love. Ewwww
We found a short video that explains this pretty well. You can watch it here.
We hope this helped you understand how your taste buds can be fooled. Unfortunately, we can't make toothpaste and orange juice taste any better together, so your best option is to avoid mixing them (unless you are strange enough to actually like that taste).
