Why mints taste cold

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Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph. Chemistry Expert. Helmenstine holds a Ph. She has taught science courses at the high school, college, and graduate levels.

Somewhere between hot peppers and Sichuan peppercorns is peppermint, which makes your mouth feel not hot but cold — even at room temperature — and also a little numb. This is thanks to the compound menthol, which tricks the brain into thinking a food is cool by activating a receptor protein in the cells of nerves that are able to sense cold. Even after a peppermint-laced food is consumed, menthol can often linger in the mouth and is reactivated with a sip of water, which why your mouth feels icy when you drink water after spitting out your gum.

To our brains, this is refreshing, which is why mint is in nearly every oral hygiene product — chemesthesis makes it taste clean. But menthol is also numbing: It activates opioid receptors — the same things activated by drugs like codeine and morphine — and works as an analgesic.

That's why cough drops with menthol are great for coughs and sore throats, and why mint has long been used for indigestion. It's not just refreshing; it's genuinely soothing. There are many more examples of chemethesis: the burn of raw garlic, for example, and the warmth of raw ginger, or of cinnamon. And chemethesis doesn't only occur in the mouth.

It can take place wherever there are nerve fibers that can be activated by chemical compounds. These fibers can be found in all types of skin throughout the body, and especially anywhere there is a mucus membrane: the eyes, the nose, and the throat, for example.

This is why it's a bad idea to touch your eyes after chopping chili peppers, and why pepper makes you sneeze. It's also why eating mustard or wasabi burns the inside of your nose. Mustard and wasabi contain a compound that vaporizes quickly, so it ends up in your nose rather than on your tongue, then triggers sensors usually used to detect pain. Though chemethesis usually gets bundled up with taste, it's really in a category of its own — one that turns simple tasting into a full body experience.

MOFAD Lab, the first exhibition space for New York's developing Museum of Food and Drink, has been open for a mere six months in a small industrial-looking space in a far north corner of Flavor, it goes without saying, is a priority of just about every restaurant or bar. TRP-V1, another ion channel on the sensory neurons, displays a similar quirk. TRP-V1 is activated by hotter temperature, but also responds to capsaicin, the chemical responsible for the spiciness of hot peppers.

This can cause even ice cold drinks to feel hot. So what would happen if you ate a chili pepper that's been in the freezer, or a warmed up mint? Or ate a hot pepper and a cool mint at the same time? Would the hot and cold perceptions cancel each other out? To be honest, we're not sure. Has anyone ever tried this at home?