Why Low Concentrations Of Salt Enhance Sweet Taste

A long-standing culinary practice is to sprinkle a little salt on fruits such as watermelon, tomatoes or cantaloupe to make them taste sweeter. In the current issue of Acta Physiologica, Yasumatsu et al. describe a likely mechanism for this phenomenon. They report for the first time that the sodium-glucose cotransporter 1 (SGLT1) is expressed in the apical membrane of sweet-sensitive taste cells and is an important contributor to the taste of glucose-containing sugars.