Sweetness Lab Conclusion & Analasys

In the Sweetness lab, we asked a question of how does the structure of carbohydrates affect its' sweetness. My partner and I found out that monosachrides had the highest degree of sweetness, disachrides the 2nd highest sweetness, then the polysachride with the lowest sweetness. For example, Fructose which is a monosaccharide, has a sweetness of 110 out of 200, while Lactose a saccharide has degree of sweetness of 90 out of 100. Finally, Cellulose, a polysaccharide had a sweetness of 85 out of 200. This data supports that the simple the structure it is the sweeter it is, which allow more organisms use simple structures of carbohydrates as often.

While our hypothesis was supported by our data, there were errors due to the fact that we have different taste buds than everyone else. Polysaccharides are the sweetest with composed of more rings, but by tasting it, it was not the sweetest carbohydrate. Same thing that Monosaccharides are the unsweetest with composed of the fewest rings, but by tasting it, it was the sweetest carbohydrate.

This lab was done to demonstrate that the simple the structure of carbohydrates are, the sweeter it can be. By tasting all the sugar with my taste buds, I can tell that Fructose is the most sweetest. According to howstuffworks.com,every taste bud in the tongue contains bascal,which is near the nucleictide where the DNA and RNA are established, and along with supporting cells that maintain 50 gustatory receptor cells. This is how some people have different tastes because what is in the cells for each tongue. So the taster would have a different degree of sweetness for each carbohydrate because the bascal, contains nucleotides which include DNA and RNA, that varies among each individual.

Carbohydrate	Type of Carbohydrate	Degree of Sweetness
Sucrose	Disaccharide	100
Glucose	Monosaccharide	95
Fructose	Monosaccharide	110
Galactose	Monosaccharide	85
Maltose	Disaccharide	90
Lactose	Disaccharide	90
Starch	Polysaccharide	90
Cellulose	Polysaccharide	85