Are all Sugars Really Sweet?

Sweetness Lab

In this lab we asked the question: "How does the structure of the carbohydrate affect its taste(sweetness)?" We found that monosaccharides, the single ringed carbohydrate, was the sweetest tasting, the disaccharides, the double ringed carbohydrate, were moderately sweet, and the polysaccharides, the multiple ringed(3+) carbohydrate, was the least sweet. My data table is shown below. The Sucrose, a monosaccharide, was considered a 200 out of 200, while Maltose, a disaccharide was considered a 10 and Starch, a polysaccharide, was considered a 0. 

Cells/organisms may use carbohydrates with different structures by bonding with different things like other carbohydrates or by using them to fuel/give energy to different parts of the cell/organism. It could also determine how energy is stored. 

Not all testers gave each sample the same rating. Some explanations for this could be that the testers's taste buds were different from each other. Another explanation could be that the testers did not totally rid themselves of the taste of the previous sugar. This could have lead to a mix in tastes giving different results to different testers. Another reason that could have affected the tasting is the amount of sugar tasted. A different amount of sugar could have lead to different sugar concentration. 

Sweetness is received by taste receptors. These taste receptors are clumped together into taste buds. In most organisms like humans or dogs, taste buds are small pegs of epithelium on the tongue called papillae. Taste buds contain from 50-150 taste receptors. 

http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/pregastric/taste.html