The Healthy Living

Your Amazing Body: Tongue

What is the strongest muscle in the body? It is the Tongue! It is covered with more than 10,000 taste buds to identify the true flavours which are dissolved in saliva when you chew your food. It is also abundantly supplied with nerves and blood vessels. Different parts of the tongue detect different flavours such as sweet, bitter, sour and salty. If you have ever thought of why the sour flavour has such a pungent taste, it’s because the taste buds that detect sour taste is 1000 times more sensitive than the sweet buds. Scientists believe this may have helped early man’s survival in identifying the poisonous plants. As you get old the amount of taste bud is also destroyed and by the age of seventy, the number will be reduced by half. This is the reason food tastes less interesting as we get aged. Medication can also destroy the taste buds.