Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot Com? Hi, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, is staff writer here how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. And with me is my fellow
Speaker 1: staff writer, the extraordinary Charles Bryant. Are you doing shut him?
Speaker 1: Are you? Yeah? I'm just waking up so fantastic. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, when you woke up this morning, you brush
Speaker 1: your teeth. I did, and you know what, just to
Speaker 1: prep myself for this, I drank some orange juice immediately
Speaker 1: after I brush my teeth. Well, I think we all
Speaker 1: know is one of the worst things you can do
Speaker 1: to yourself. And you did this on purpose, just to
Speaker 1: prep I did. I'm a method podcaster, Josh, and I
Speaker 1: thought it was the role required it. I salute the
Speaker 1: dedication to your cremer ship. Actually, that's funny that that
Speaker 1: you should do that. Well, it's not that funny if
Speaker 1: you're preparing for it, because that means you read this article.
Speaker 1: Why does orange juice taste bad if you brush your teeth?
Speaker 1: So since you read it, I guess we can have
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty intelligent conversation about it. Right, Well, we'll try.
Speaker 1: Let's see what you got on flavor. Uh, flavor, I've
Speaker 1: got a little bit on flavor. Uh. Flavor is divided
Speaker 1: into five different categories, which most four of what you've
Speaker 1: probably heard of. Uh, you got sweet, you have salty,
Speaker 1: you have better, you have sour, and then you have
Speaker 1: mommy mommy meaty tastes. Yeah, meaty tastes. I don't know
Speaker 1: why they didn't just call it meaty. Actually, I don't
Speaker 1: know either. I think O mommy is just as nice
Speaker 1: because everyone wants to know what the heck O ou
Speaker 1: mommy is. Anyways, you get to say them both. If
Speaker 1: you just said meaty, no, they'd say what's meeting and
Speaker 1: you'd say you mommy icebreaker? Yeah, exactly, a Japanese icebreaker. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so anyway, sorry you got sidetracked. Um, flavor is
Speaker 1: all these different five things, and they react with each
Speaker 1: other to create different different flavors with flavor combinations, and
Speaker 1: you get flavor and temperature and consistency and smell and
Speaker 1: texture together and you have, uh what we know about taste. Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like all of the different toppings available
Speaker 1: from Delicious Pizza. Hut brand Pizza working together to create
Speaker 1: over one million combinations of delicious pizza. That's astounding. It
Speaker 1: is astounding and delicious actually, so we we kind of
Speaker 1: understand flavor a little bit. What we understand less though,
Speaker 1: is exactly how this works. Um. When I was researching
Speaker 1: taste for this article, I ran across an article written
Speaker 1: by one of our esteem colleagues, Sarah Dowdy, and she
Speaker 1: wrote on how smell works. And of course these two
Speaker 1: are are you know, they're work in conjunction, and actually
Speaker 1: we don't really know how either one works, but they're
Speaker 1: they're prevailing theories that explain both, and they're pretty similar.
Speaker 1: Actually has to do with our taste receptors, and they're
Speaker 1: supposedly shaped a certain way and they accept only certain
Speaker 1: shaped molecules, So like your sweet receptor is shaped so
Speaker 1: that it would only accept molecules that possess this maybe
Speaker 1: a sweet uh property to them? Right? What's the shape like?
Speaker 1: It's it's shaped like an egg. You don't want to
Speaker 1: know what do mommy shape like? It's terrible down there. Um,
Speaker 1: But that's that's pretty much what we're thinking. How how
Speaker 1: taste works? Um, And we have a little better handle
Speaker 1: on exactly what's going on with that horrible collision of
Speaker 1: orange juice and toothpaste. Do you you know what it was?
Speaker 1: I mean you read the article, right, Yeah I did. Um.
Speaker 1: One leading theory is that it's it's this chemical compound.
Speaker 1: Is it a chemical compound? I believe it is. I
Speaker 1: mean it's got three names, right, Sodium laurel sulfate, which
Speaker 1: is a surfactant, which is a fancy name for kind
Speaker 1: of a sudd saying agent. So you know, you brush
Speaker 1: your teeth and it gets you foam at the mouth
Speaker 1: like a you know, rabbit dog. Rabbit dog. Everyone likes
Speaker 1: this rabbit dog. It's never a rabbit cat. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: don't want to run across the Atticus finch when you
Speaker 1: have a mouthful of s l last you don't. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the the the SLS doesn't really do anything except make
Speaker 1: you think that your teeth are getting cleaner and it
Speaker 1: helps sell toothpaste. Yeah, well it's doing a heck of
Speaker 1: a job. Uh. And from our understanding of s l last,
Speaker 1: I mean, we we have a pretty good idea of
Speaker 1: what's going on on the tongue. Um, it's actually like
Speaker 1: Conan the Destroyer as far as phosphel lipids are concerned,
Speaker 1: These things are basically like little little coverings on your
Speaker 1: bitter receptors, kind of tones down bitter taste um, and
Speaker 1: it actually goes in and just destroys these things. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it also dampens your sweet receptors.
Speaker 1: So when you have Saudio laurel sulfate on the tongue,
Speaker 1: your sweetness is down, your bitterness is up, and orange
Speaker 1: juice is among the worst things on the planet at
Speaker 1: that moment. It's like a perfect storm colliding in your
Speaker 1: mouth exactly and your left you know, with your knees
Speaker 1: pulled up to your chest, rocking in the corner, just
Speaker 1: waiting for this to subside. And how long does that take? Well,
Speaker 1: josh Lyn did a study, and I'm not sure why,
Speaker 1: but some doctor felt the need to do a study
Speaker 1: and he determined that it takes about an hour. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Case closed. Actually, hopefully the doctor had plenty of volunteers
Speaker 1: to try this out and your to do it himself. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about taste and what
Speaker 1: we think is going on down there, especially in regards
Speaker 1: to orange juice and toothpaste, read why does orange juice
Speaker 1: taste bad after you brush your teeth. On how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Because it how stuff works dot Com m
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