We have a pretty good understanding of how other tastes work, especially sweetness. Salt is just so damn… elusive.

I just have to say this is such a well made and beautiful science video

If wikipedia is anything to go by, KBr has a sweet taste when dilute, bitter at moderate concentration, and salty at high concentration, while NaBr is salty across the board. Otherwise, there have not been enough tests for the impacts of NH4Cl, SrCl2, RbCl, MgCl2, or CaCl2, for example.

Am I right to think we should take this video with a pinch of salt?

I really enjoyed this episode, thanks George and crew! I'd been under the impression Salt Receptor 1™ was all there was to the sense of saltiness and wasn't aware of the cross-taste interactions. But finding out there's a lot more we don't understand is always a pleasant surprise. Who knows, maybe this video will spur someone to go on to do research on this and expand our understanding a little more.

I've always put salt on grapefruit because it made it taste so much better,, I also eat lemons with salt, although I don't do that nearly as much as when I was younger (my dentist was always horrified that I did that, but I absolutely love sour stuff)

What a joy to see this video! As a fellow scientist, loved the approach and depth of analysis. Will definitely try some of the experiments just for fun! Congrats for the production!!

I think if the whole chemist thing falls through, you could be a comedian! Thanks for digging into a subject I didn't know I wanted to know and the real laughs.

You tried the KCl second. What colors you perceive are affected by what you looked at before, what it is next to, and what the coloring of the whole "scene" is. Isn't how you taste KCl similar to whether you saw a blue or a gold dress?

11:29 I spit my salted coffee out lmao

Funny and informative is my favorite kind of KZfaq video 🙌

3:48 - the saltiest of the salt-bae impressions :p

So does milk make coffee less bitter because of it's salt content? (Milk is surprisingly salty)

This is so cool and educational, thank you so much

This video was great so funny and informative. Thank you!

Add salt to sour pineapples, oranges etc.

I´m really enjoying your videos. It´s just amazing. Congratulations for your excellent job

I didn’t know how much we don’t know about salt! Well, in flavor, anyways. Fascinating!

as a gamer, i can tell you that saltiness reduces bitterness by way of malding in chat.

I've heard the thing about adding salt to coffee years ago, but dismissed it. This video convinced me to at least try it because it went beyond just an old-wive's-tale, it actually tried to prove it's not just a placebo. That said, I wish George had actually specified HOW MUCH salt to add to coffee (what's a "pinch"? is it to a cup or pot?)

Thank you! Love the humor!

In your dislike of IPA's, you've identified the reason for their popularity- they go remarkably well with salty foods in hot weather where we're often craving salt due to loss via perspiration. The hypothesis then, might be that bitterness increases intake of 'water binding' compounds like sugars, acids, and salts.

George is from Maryland!

Early in the video and I think I see your problem. As you allude to with C=N, chemistry and biology often look like strange bedfellows. The dynamic nature of living organisms, and our ability to compensate for, and exist in variable ranges of environment is incredibly complex. That's why med school takes so long. My guess is that 'perception' is the end product of a complex array of sensors (taste, smell, texture, look, context) filtered through a processing system (I like bitter, I don't like sour, I have never tried mushrooms, I once ate a slug and became ill therefore slimy food evokes emesis). There are probably factors such as: Age: Senescence and tolerance Sex: Because Sodium intake: Possible that you crave NaCl when low. Hydration status: Possibly alterations in perceptions of NaCl when dehydrated generally. Other electrolyte balances/status: See above. Temperature: There may be prophylactic sensors that predict that we will require >NaCl in hot environments due to loss via sweat. You also have to realise that we are dealing with neurons to convey messages here. How does a neuron propagate a signal again? Sodium Potassium pumps IIRC. --------------------------------- Oh, yeah, you addressed some of this. Nice. The tasting 'everything' makes sense if you take into account that salt may be directly affecting signal propagation. Perhaps it doesn't interact with the receptor itself. The complicated interactions it has with various neurons that distortions in that balance lead to random misfiring. @ 9:00 loving this video! ----------------------------------- Yeah, would make sense. So there are sodium channels, but does it have to be a receptor? Is there no way for salt to cross cell membranes with other ions? Again, I honestly feel that if you were hyponatremic, you would either taste the NaCl differently. And you would prefer it to KCl.... could totally be wrong though. Maybe the 'taste' is just the neurological consequence of changes in ion concentrations in various regions on the tongue? Wait... don't we also have taste receptors on our anus? How do they react to salt?

George is an awesome host. More videos like this!

Great video 👨‍🔬

I'm amazed by everything that's this video!

There's a couple of variables which can't be isolated which contribute to this quandary: how the sense of smell interacts with the sense of taste and that our senses are difference engines. When eating/drinking we are also smelling the environment (including that which we are consuming) adding to the noted brain involvement. Some people can consciously smell when the air changes salt content. The "difference engine" part is where our senses align with the current environment. We don't smell or taste ourselves to enable us to better detect the environment. That means we have to "cleanse our palette" between tasting different things. Like at a wine tasting, where items used to cleanse are favorable to tasting wines. Unfortunately, when tasting something as basic as salt, what would we use to cleanse that wouldn't upset the balance? I think if that solution & protocol can be determined testing would achieve breakthroughs.

Works with cocoa too, except it only matters if you're a crazy person like me who likes their cocoa incredibly strong. Most people's cocoa mask the bitterness with massive amounts of sugar, but if that's not your thing, try the salt trick.

Excelente .

Very Well Made Video

I recently fell in love with this channel -- but, if I may, BRING US MORE ANDREW CONTENT!! alongside George and our other hosts, ofc, but if I may hype the underdog BIG FAN OF ANDREW CONTRIBUTIONS! regardless, keep it up, team!!

Don't try and take away my bitterness damn you!

Oh, my gosh. Denatonium Benzoate does taste really terrible and it lingers on the tongue. I think it was one of your videos where they said that toddlers was more likely to like the taste of antifreeze with the bitter substance in it. Also it did not work as an deterrent when my bunny was chewing on its cage, rather it had the extreme opposite effect 😫

How does such a fascinating video have only 9k views 😱

I love black coffee and IPAs. My mouth must be naturally really salty.

I don't like bitter beers - I've been putting a pinch of salt in my beer for 20 years now!

We had some bitter chocolate last night, and I tried it with a little salt...and it helped!

Well... Isn't the common point between KCl and NaCl in fact... chloride ions? Are we sure they are not responsible for the salty taste?

nerves use sodium potassium pump to trigger an action potential to send nerve signals. maybe this has to do with it?

2 salt 2 receptor

[Qualia] KZfaq video: There's No Such Thing As Orange

Right off the bat, and I'm serious, I haven't watched any more of this from this moment... James Hoffman (sp?) did not recommend salting coffee. I just watched that episode, and I'm not a coffee snob but I am a coffee addict, so I found the idea interesting but I'd never try it. I love my coffee straight black and dripped automatically. JH being the most reasonable coffee snob I know of though, I had to see his point of view on it. He said there is a marked difference in the bitterness of the coffee, but even a little salt adds a clear saltiness to the coffee, which is not great. He recommended better coffee, but if you have to endure terrible coffee (and this is usually something like robusta, not arabica), salt could help if the bitterness is worse than the saltiness. He definitely didn't recommend it 😂

Aweee the chloride and ions being inseparable is so sweet 🥲

THIS IS AMAZING. i love science. imma put salt everywhere.

The common denominator of NaCl and KCl is the negative chloride ion. I wonder if there is an interaction there with the taste receptors / taste receptor 2? #nobelprizeincoming

It works on oranges that are sour and sweet

This is beautiful

Is there a reason Reactions didn't make this a blinded taste test?

Could salt receptor 2 perhaps be the Sodium-Potassium Pump membrane enzyme? -> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93potassium_pump

Thumbing through the PDR, you'd notice that under "Mechanism Of Action" for 99.9% of all drugs, its 'unknown' (*for their specified on-label use). I always found it odd that we just use these medications even though we don't know exactly how they work, just that they do in fact work.

Has anyone done tests where instead of asking people what they taste, that instead they monitor the strength of the signal along the nerves? (maybe that's not possible, idk)

BUT ALSO salt is healthy to have if you have a defficiency of it in your body lol

Potassium chloride? As in the ingredient of letha1 inject1ions?

We are the salt of the world.

This is why you take salt and lime with tequila.

Is adding a pinch of salt to salt would make it less salty?

You could actually make a solution of sodium without the chloride, sodium iodide. And you could likewise make a solution of potassium chloride.

salt to taste salt for the little hole in that face better go thanks to the little bird that let me know that’s not you how’d he tell you to, i found you what you when you he’s all talk he’s just playing cards at the boardwalk watch that frown talk just a little bit, to calm you down

This boy just said IPA's suck.. What else can I do but DISLIKE??

errr ... have you ever thought of adding sugar to the coffee? Like ... 1 teaspoon of sugar only. Or maybe change coffee quality ... or most probably, remove all limescales from the kettle. This is not science ... it called "COMMON SENSE" .... I know ... we (they ... you) lost all common sense in these last 2 years.

Being a scientist, normally I do not post salty responses to YT vids but if ever there was a moment to remark that a video left a bad taste, this HAS to be it. Because around 11:06 when the host calls out the unresolved "mystery receptor' so elusive amongst the 'taste community' I laughed so hard my salted coffee gushed through my nose. I was thinking by that point, If Na+ has a well-understood salt taste mechanism 1 ... Then.... WHAT oh WHAT could salt taste mechanism 2 possibly BE??? Uh, just what else is in that there salt? Oh chloride you say? Right... MAYBE just MAYBE could there be a chloride-related mechanism?? Turns out, the fifth result on the first page of Google Scholar for search terms "chloride ion receptor taste" right now is this research out of Tokyo confirmed the same, released earlier this year : www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.23.481615v1.full.pdf It's not precisely a chloride channel as it is with sodium, but rather that chloride blocks taste receptors for sweet and umami that which provides a second major salt taste mechanism. Somehow, sometimes the preposterously obvious is really quite elusive isn't it? After seeing George demonstrate on-screen that KCl tastes almost the same as NaCl, is it odd it didn't occur to anyone creating or consulting the show that there might be a Cl- mechanism? Perhaps a follow-on video could be warranted. And if so, maybe you can also explain how the 'taste community' ... missed this possibility? Maybe we could have a chat with that study author, a certain Atsuko reachable at a_yama@okayama-u.ac.jp And ask how the elusively obvious idea came to him?? I'll leave my fellow comments section readers here to judge whether salt really can make almost anything taste better, including this YT comment :-) And to the video creators, good work keeping us engaged in the topic long enough to want to follow a hunch your vid brought up!