So Sweet, It's Bitter

Talking ‘bout Stevia, that plant-based extract of potent sweetness. Who decides what is sweet, anyway? I mean, who’s taste buds? Is there a universal definition for sweetness? Empirically measurable physical characteristics? Aren’t human perceptions subjective and therefore challenging to measure precisely, not less exactly? Can you say without certain that your eyes perceive exactly what my ees perceive, cone by cone, rod by rod, synapse by synapse, receptor by receptor, cell by cell? Whats important is how we interpret our sense, not precisely what they tell our brains, but that may be another trail of thought.

Sweetness, like beauty or anything, just may be in the eye, or in this case, tongue of the beholder. Certainly let’s not forget the brain, where everything perceived by our senses is processed, interpreted, combined with everything else, including our imagination, and given some sort of explanation so it can be understood. How unique is each brain? I don't mean in physical characteristics, I mean in cognitive functioning. Think well ever map every cell and synapse and then be able to measure whatever is going on in each precisely? And then, who decides how to perceive what we discover? An endless loop of questions seems to be a very likely outcome. Will we ever know everything? And would knowing everything be as sweet as we might imagine? Yes, so we come back around to what may be an arbitrary (and perhaps scientifically unanswerable) largely philosophical question, what is sweet?

Sure, we can give names to body parts and discover how the physical processes and biochemistry works, but can we define the concept of sweetness? We go to the internet to see what people have said about this. Wikipedia tells us that there is something called sweetness science which lead s to a sweetness scale (which reminds me of the hotness scale, but that's another story that reminds me to stop at the post office tomorrow to pick up some hot sauces I ordered... hopefully I'll remember to remember tomorrow, aye?), which may have some validity, but only if one tests it out on themself to merge the collective subjective with the individual subjective experience of senses. My tongue isn't your tongue, after all, or brain or experience or preferences or so on.

There are lesson plans for teachers that take the subjectivity to a whole new level, maybe that's how creationsts feel about teaching evolution. but I'm only guessing because I ave no clue what forms those delusions. The LA Times ran an article about the sweetness of artificial sweeteners when we look for news about sweetness. Does anybody expect long term use of lab-created chemicals to trick our brain to turn out well? Especially since profit motive is the primary guiding force behind the creation of these chemicals, for me, it's just one more suicidal decision in a long line of suicidal decisions we humans make all the time. On that note, I refer you to sweetness for dummies and trivia,which may be all we can really do about answering this question, keep it simple and try to have some fun with it.

Anyway, all this came about because I dropped too much stevia into a drink and it was so sweet, it seemed bitter. To my taste perception, at least. Yes, accidental overdose of a plant-based sweetener brought on this babble. Hope it was worth your time, or amusing, even.

Entertainment can be sweet when it inspires a smile.

Narf :)


Naturally we find a range from hard scientific papers to tongue-in-cheek trivia designed for amusement more than education and the almost obligatory for dummies offerings when we google ”what is sweet?“ ”what is sweetness?” and “are there Empirically measurable physical characteristics for sweetness?”



The scale presents an interesting dilemma. First, we must accept (on faith and collective agreement, I suppose), that Sucrose is the standard of whatever sweetness might be and then. We see that somehow, other sugars have a defined relationship to sucrose. How that relationship is actually measured and defined may be in the hard science, but for this exploration, I’ll just toss in the links for future further reference and study.



Sweetness of various compounds[a][15][16][17][18][19]

Name

Type of compound

Sweetness

Lactose

Disaccharide

0.16

Maltose

Disaccharide

0.33 – 0.45

Sorbitol

Polyalcohol

0.6

Glucose

Monosaccharide

0.74 – 0.8

Sucrose

Disaccharide

1.00 (reference)

Fructose

Monosaccharide

1.17 – 1.75

Sodium cyclamate

Sulfonate

26

Steviol glycoside

Glycoside

40 – 300

Aspartame

Dipeptide methyl ester

180 – 250

Acesulfame potassium

Oxathiazinone dioxide

200

Sodium saccharin

Sulfonyl compound

300 – 675

Sucralose

Modified Disaccharide

600

Thaumatin

Protein

2000

Lugduname

Guanidine compound

300,000 (estimated)



So all this comes from a sip of about ten ounces of coffee that had three Stevia packets dropped into it. Next time, I’ll try just one packet. Lol.