Buzz
You’ve just pulled a rich, chocolate devil’s food cake from the oven and placed it on the counter to cool. Slowly, the irresistible, diet-destroying scent of chocolate fills the air, and your mouth starts to water with anticipation.
As chemist Hadi Fares explains in the video below, saliva serves several purposes, with the most important here being its role in digestion. It moistens the food we consume, allowing us to maneuver it around our mouths for chewing and tasting. It also contains enzymes that kick-start digestion even before swallowing.
The term mouth-watering is spot on. There are two kinds of saliva: mucous and serous. Mucous saliva is thick, sticky, and loaded with mucus, while serous saliva is almost pure water, which floods your mouth when the sight, scent, or thought of particularly delicious food hits your senses.
Producing saliva is your body’s enthusiastic reaction to the food before you. WE ARE ABOUT TO EAT! your brain declares. YES! WE’RE HAVING CAKE! your salivary glands cheer, eagerly secreting saliva into your mouth.
What happens next is entirely in your hands.
