Sweetness Lab Reflection

In today's lab my lab group and I analyzed the physical properties, like color and texture, of different carbohydrates. We also tasted each carbohydrate and rated the sweetness on a scale of one to two hundred. A trend that I noticed during the lab was that the carbohydrates with less rings in it's structure, tended to have more of a sweet taste than those with more rings. The sweetest carbohydrate (in my opinion) was the fructose, with is a monosaccharide, while the least sweet carbohydrates were starch and cellulose, which are both polysaccharides. Many of the carbohydrates we tasted are components of the foods I eat regularly. Starch for example is found in foods like bread, and potatoes, while sucrose is found in ever fruit and vegetable. I consume fructose every day because fructose is found in fruits and honey and I use honey to sweeten the tea that I drink regularly. According to
The Colorado State University's website, humans are able to taste these sweet flavors thanks to taste receptor cells that exsist on our taste buds, sweet flavors are identified by the taste receptors usually on the tip of the tongue recognizing nutrients that contain high energy, like sucrose. Without our sweet taste receptors, we wouldn't have tasked anything in the lab!