Words cost so little (0.2 cents per spoken word, I estimate). But one cannot throw taste, aroma, and flavor around. Taste comes from the sensations one gets through our taste buds in our mouth. Aroma through our nose. And flavor is the combination of aroma, taste and other sensations we get from food when we eat. There are also mechanical sensations. These include the texture, the crunchiness, the slipperiness of food, what we call mouth feel.

Taste and aroma are closely related. They work by having cells in our body convert the presence of a molecule into electrical signals that our brains then interpret — fishy, floral, bitter, sweet — pick your adjective. Our sense of smell comes from this small patch of skin in upper part nasal cavity. Our nasal cavity is the hole we have above the roof of the mouth. Taste comes mainly from the tongue, but we have a few taste buds in other places inside our mouths.

Humans can identify five or six tastes and a few sensations in their mouths. The basic tastes — sweet, bitter, umami, sour, and salty — are now being joined by a sixth one: fatty. It appears that mammals have taste receptor cells for fat. This discovery was made on mice in 2005 by Philippe Besnard and friends by connecting a protein, called CD36, which exists on the surface of cells, to the wants of mice for fatty food. Humans also have the CD36 protein, and experiments at Purdue University show that humans can detect the taste of fat.

Fats can be detected through their texture, but that is not the main clue used by our bodies. Experiments show that there is another mechanism. Just by having fats in our mouths the level of triglycerides in our blood goes up. We store triglycerides and not just any fat in our bodies. If the same experiment is repeated with a fat-free butter (simulating butter’s mouth feel), the level of triglycerides is half of the level with real butter. So the oil’s texture is not enough and there has to be another mechanism for detecting fat. My money is on CD36.