Sweetness Lab

In this lab we asked the question of "how would the structure of a carbohydrate affect its taste?" Monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides are all different types of carbohydrates. The more rings a carbohydrate has, the less sweet it is, and the less rings a carbohydrate has, the more sweet it is. Monosaccharides are the sweetest, then disaccharides, and lastly polysaccharides are the least sweet. Starch and cellulose, which are both polysaccharides, were rated a five and a zero compared to the degree of sweetness of sucrose, which was a hundred. Maltose and lactose are disaccharides, and they had higher ratings of sweetness than polysaccharides but lower ratings than monosaccharides. Maltose was given a rating of fifty and lactose was given a ten. Lastly, the monosaccharides glucose and fructose were given very high scores of seventy and one hundred and fifty. This data supports my claim because I rated all the monosaccharides the sweetest, the disaccharides the second sweetest, and the polysaccharides the least sweet. The shape of the carbohydrates might affect the way that cells and organisms use it because it could give them more or less energy depending if they're a monosaccharide, a disaccharide, or a polysaccharide. This could affect the amount of energy used by the organism or cell. All testers did not give the same ratings because different people taste different levels of sweetness. One person could think that glucose is sweeter than sucrose while some people could think the opposite. It is very subjective and it really depends on how your tastebuds work. Also, different people would get different amounts of the carbohydrates and some might pick up more of it, causing it to be sweeter. The last reason why some people could have ranked it differently is because they could have tasted the samples in a different order causing something to maybe taste more or less sweet. They could have had something sweeter before and make the next sample seem sweeter than it really is, or the other way around. When humans eat something sweet, it stimulates the receptor proteins on the outer tips of the sweet-responding taste cells. When your taste buds taste something sweet, it excites the sweet taste cell and it sends a message to the brain, to particular centers of the central nervous system that respond to sweetness. Sugar transporter, special ion channels, and potassium ion channels respond to the metabolic state of the organism or the metabolic state of the taste cell. Tasters could rank the sweetness levels of the same samples differently due to the fact that the brain sends different responses on how sweet the substance is to your body.

Carbohydrate	Type of Carbohydrate	Degree of Sweetness	Color	Texture	Other Observations/Connections to Food
Sucrose	disaccharide	100	white	granular	melts very fast in mouth
Glucose	monosaccharide	70	white	granular	melts quickly
Fructose	monosaccharide	150	white	granular	very sweet
Galactose	monosaccharide	30	white	powdery	texture of powdered sugar
Maltose	disaccharide	50	brown	clumpy	weird aftertaste
Lactose	disaccharide	10	white	powdery	tastes like flour
Starch	polysaccharide	5	white	powdery	tastes like paper
Cellulose	polysaccharide	0	white	powdery	tastes like nothing