Sweetness lab

In this lab, we asked how the structure of carbohydrates affects their taste. To test this, we the pure forms of various carbohydrates, and compared their taste. We found that monosaccharides were the sweetest carbohydrates, followed by disaccharides, which were slightly sweet, finally polysaccharides were not sweet at all. To measure this we use sucrose as a baseline of 100, and created a scale from 0 to 200, with 0 being not sweet at all, and 200 being super sweet. Our monosaccharides had an average of 140, while the disaccharides had an average of about 50, and the polysaccharides all ranked at zero. This help prove that monosaccharides are the sweetest, followed by disaccharides, and then polysaccharides. Also the highest ranked carbohydrate was Fructose, with a rank of 200, which supports our claim that monosaccharides are the sweetest carbohydrate.

This lead to my inference that the structure of carbohydrates affects the way cells use them. The simpler monosaccharides could be for when the cell needs a quick burst of energy because they are a simple ring, and can be broken down quickly. The slightly more complex disaccharides, could be for when the energy is need over a longer period of time because they are made of two rings, and will take longer to break down. Finally the polysaccharides could be used for long term energy storage because it is made up of a long chain of rings, and would take the longest to break down.

There were slight differences in the ratings different tasters gave. This could be due to many factors. One is that everybody is different, and has different opinions on how things taste. Also Different tasters spent different amounts of time between tasting different sample. Finally, Both tasters didn't take exactly the same amount of each sample.

You sense of taste is determined by your taste buds, which are scattered throughout your mouth. These taste buds each specialize in a certain basic taste(sweet, sour, bitter, etc...). Each person has a different amount of each type of taste bud in their mouth. This leads to people with more "sweet" taste buds to perceive a food to be more sweet that someone with less "sweet" taste buds would.

Carbohydrate	Type of carbohydrate	Degree of sweetness	Color	Texture	Other observations
Fructose	Monosaccharide	200	Clear Crystals	Grainy	Super sweet
Glucose	Monosaccharide	150	Clear Crystals	Grainy	sweet
Galactose	Monosaccharide	75	white	Powdery	pretty sweet
Sucrose	Disaccharide	100	white	Grainy	slightly sweet
Maltose	Disaccharide	50	tan	Hard and chunky	bitter
Lactose	Disaccharide	15	white	Powdery	slightly sweet
Starch	Polysaccharide	0	white	Powdery	tastes like flour
Cellulose	Polysaccharide	0	white	Powdery	stays on tongue