Are you an adventurous person to test what does soap taste like? If yes, does soap taste like it smells? To answer that, what exactly is soap?
Soap contain many chemical ingredients for cleaning and additives for color and fragrance. It is a substance used as a washing and cleansing agent made by some kind of a fat or oil plus a special substance called “lye”, and mostly by adding natural additives of color and smell. Like most things, soap gets its taste from the things it’s made of.
For this situation, it’s the combination of fats or oils with lye and with natural additives of color and smell. So, despite the fact that fats or oils like olive oil might taste okay in other forms when they’re mixed with lye to make soap, they end up better suited for washing or cleaning than for tasting because soap does not taste like it smells, it tastes like strange bitter chemicals. Consequently, soap tastes horrible! But because taste and recognition vary from person to person, there is no definitive answer.
However, there are some reasons you can taste soap without tasting the actual soap, at least in theory. Your mouth might temporarily taste soapy after you eat foods like carrots and cilantro. That off-tasting soapiness in carrots comes from a high concentration of a volatile compound known as terpenoids. All carrots contain this compound and combined with sugar, it’s how carrots get their flavor. But when present in high doses, it makes carrots taste soapy and bitter rather than sweet. This can occur for a number of reasons like the variety of carrot, harvesting too soon, poor growing conditions, and even the way you’re storing it at home.
Distinctive-Smelling Herb
In addition, cilantro has a strong flavor and a distinctive-smelling herb that is used in cooking, but it is also one of the most common foods that give a soapy taste to some people. It all comes down to the chemicals because cilantro contains aldehyde chemical compounds, which appear in both the plant and also as a product of the soap making process. If you have aldehyde receptors that interpret the compounds in cilantro in a certain way, it’s going to taste like soap. The soapy taste caused by cilantro is because of your genes and how the brain processes the smell. “One of those genes is OR6A2, which is very sensitive to the aldehyde chemicals that give cilantro its distinctive flavor.”
These foods may taste gross to you, but rest assured that even though carrots and cilantro give a soapy taste, there’s nothing wrong with them and they’re safe to eat.
How To Deal With Soap Poisoning
Accidental poisoning applies only to actual soap product that can happen when an individual comes in contact with certain soap products that contain very strong chemical components, including soap used to clean your body or household. When you ingest or inhale these highly toxic products, you may experience life-threatening symptoms. You can also often come in contact with soap via eyes.
What Are The Signs And Symptoms Of Soap Poisoning?
Soap poisoning can be distinguished with the help of various signs and symptoms. Some of these signs and symptoms include the following:
- If you ingested soap, you may experience severe pain in stomach or repeated vomiting with or without blood.
- If soap gets in your eyes, you may lose vision or experience difficulty focusing because the chemicals may be burning your eyes.
- If the soap came into contact with your skin, you may have irritation or even burns on the surface of your skin.
- If you inhaled fumes from soap products, you may have difficulty breathing or have swelling in your throat, tongue, and lips. This is very serious because difficulty breathing or swallowing can be dangerous.
It is to be remembered that not all of these signs and symptoms can show up in a victim. The signs and symptoms of soap poisoning depend on:
- The nature and type of product you came into contact with.
- The amount of product you’ve had ingested.
- How much contact you had with the product.
Poisoning can be life-threatening. If you believe that someone you know is experiencing soap poisoning, you must get in contact with emergency services provided in your area to seek treatment immediately to help prevent any harmful consequences.
So, how does soap really work? Soap works by pulling the dirt off us and allowing it to be washed away. The cleansing action of soap comes from its unique ability to surround oil particles, causing them to be scattered in water and easily rinsed away. Soap has been used for centuries and continues to be widely used as a cleansing agent and/or mild antiseptic. So, it is not advisable to be ingested because if you eat it, it can do terrible things to your inside but as long as you keep it outside of you where it belongs, it can do no harm to you. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using soap as a cleansing agent.
Advantages of Soap
- Soaps are antibacterial, they can help eliminate germs.
- Mild soaps can wash off the destructive acids that drop on your skin and neutralize it.
- Soaps are used for bathing, cleaning, and washing.
- It helps keep skin clean.
- They also remove dirt, oil, makeup and other impurities on the skin.
- Soaps are eco-friendly and biodegradable.
Disadvantages of Soap
- Ingestion and inhaling soaps that have a very strong chemical component may cause poisoning which leads to mild to extreme medical problems.
- Soaps are not degradable suitable in the hard water. This is because, soap forms a scum in hard water, which does not rinse away easily.
- Thus, soap solution forms less lather with hard water, they have weak cleansing properties in saline and acidic water.
In general, whether you have tasted an actual soap or the certain types of foods like cilantro and carrots that gives a soapy taste, they have the similar result which is the weird bitter chemical taste. However, ingesting soap is dangerous to your well-being while eating foods with soapy taste doesn’t cause for alarm.