BEST DENTIST IN CHENNAI! This unusual mobility permits your tongue to swallow food and to form words needed for speech. And let’s not forget another key function of your tongue: taste. Your tongue is covered with pink tissue called mucosa and tiny bumps called papilla. The papilla is home to about 10, 000 taste buds. Smoking reduces the number of working taste buds, as does the aging process. Taste buds have microscopic hairs that send messages to the brain about how something tastes. Many are surprised to learn that we only have six different tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and two newly discovered tastes called umami (meat, bone broth, seaweed) and fat. More complex tastes are actually the result of our sense of smell.