Is There a Fat Taste in the Brain?

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All taste is hard to isolate from the other senses, but fat is particularly tricky. Fat plays a fundamental role in the texture, the touch of foods. We know that we smell fat, and we know that we sense the of fat, but the next question is whether we also taste fat? To test taste and taste receptors and isolation, camilla rigged up some pretty wild experiments. There was something we were registering that was different between these two. Some promising evidence of a signal of fat taste being processed in the brain. But what exactly is going on, we're not sure.

For thousands of years, there have been four basic tastes recognized across cultures. But thanks to Kumiko Ninomiya (aka the Umami Mama), scientists finally accepted a fifth. As part of its Making Sense series, Vox’s Unexplainable podcast explores whether there could be even more.

This episode was reported and produced by Meradith Hoddinott and edited by Katherine Wells, Noam Hassenfeld, Brian Resnick with help from Mandy Nyugen and Byrd Pinkerton. Music by Noam. Cristian Ayala handled the mixing and sound design. Research and fact checking by Richard Sima. Tori Dominguez is our audio fellow.

Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained

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