Remember those annoying taste testing experiments you had to do when you were a shrimp of a kid? You know, those taste experiments based on that widely accepted taste map? That map that stated that the front part of your tongue tastes sweet stuff, the sides tastes salty and sour, and the back of your tongue senses all the bitter stuff? Remember getting a failing grade on that experiment because you insisted you can taste sugar with the tip of your tongue? Well, all those frustrated preschoolers out there might just be vindicated.

Here are some prevalent tongue myths and the truths behind them:

Myth: There are four distinct tastes, period. Truth: Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda identified a fifth taste called 'umami', way back in the early 1900s. Umami refers to the taste of glutamate that is common in most Japanese foods. Most scientists agree on the existence of this fifth taste, and this has been ignored by the West throughout most of the 20th century. In fact, we commonly experience this taste in bacon and monosodium glutamate or MSG. What's more is that there has been considerable debate about the existence of a sixth taste receptor for fat. Homer Simpson must have those in abundance.

Myth: The taste map is true, and those are the only areas you can sense those tastes with. Truth: The tongue map dates back to a research by German scientist D.P. Hanig, published in 1901. The guy set out to measure taste sensitivity based on the four known basic tastes. His conclusion was that sensitivity to the four tastes were varied around the tongue. Sweet on the tip, bitter on the back, etc. This all was based on the subjective output of his volunteers.

In 1942, Edwin Boring took Hanig's raw data and calculated the real numbers for the levels of sensitivity. The problem was that the sensitivities were plotted on a graph in such a way that other scientists could easily assume that areas of low sensitivity meant NO sensitivity. This is the birth of that tongue-map myth that many a preschoolers have fallen prey to.

The truth is that in 1974, a scientist named Virginia Collings re-examined Hanig's work and found that the variations were just that...variations. Moreover, the variations were small and almost insignificant. You can taste sour well enough with the tip of your tongue.

Myth: The tongue is the strongest part of your body. Truth: Nope, your heart is.

The real mystery now is this: how come textbooks still use that oversimplified and bogus taste map? Science, after all, is about rendering textbooks obsolete.