Lies Your Teacher Told You

It's sad how many myths we still learn in school. Who besides me spent time in high-school biology grimacing while touching a cotton swab soaked in quinine to their tongue to show how it tasted "more bitter" on the back of the tongue than the front?

"[Linda Bartoshuk of Yale] and other scientists have proved that you can taste salty, sweet, sour, and bitter everywhere on the tongue where there are taste buds. 'Your brain doesn't care where taste is coming from in your mouth,' Bartoshuk says. 'And researchers have known this for thirty years.' "

Sometimes it seems like much of my early education was a waste as I had to spend so many years unlearning all those "facts."