On Taste: In Humans and Other Animals

Taste begins as a way of determining what is safe and useful to eat, but its evolution has produced some wonderfully strange results. Cats can’t taste sweetness, pandas have lost the ability to perceive umami, and mosquitos use taste receptors to help decide which of us they would most like to bite. 

In On Taste, molecular biologist Davide Risso and food scientist Gabriella Morini trace this sense across millions of years of evolution, from microbes and octopuses to birds and humans. They explain how taste receptors detect the chemical composition of food, why different species perceive the same foods differently, and how our own preferences can change over a lifetime. 

The familiar categories of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami are only part of the story. Risso and Morini consider whether the heat of chili peppers, the cooling sensation of mint, or the pungency of garlic should count as tastes, while distinguishing taste itself from the larger, multisensory experience we call flavor. 

Accessible without sacrificing the science, the book uses taste as a way into questions of evolution, nutrition, culture, and our relationship with the environment. It’s as interested in why we like what we eat as in the biological machinery that allows us to taste it in the first place. 

Hardcover. 112 pages.