Love affair with bubbles

I have an addiction to bubbles. I am that person who upon receipt of a sodastream, immediately dumped in a bottle of white wine. My previous employer had free sparkling water and I would often go through half a dozen in an average day. Before I get judgment from the blog readers turned armchair doctors – there is no association with bone mineral density and carbonated water.  There is an association for soda, but that’s likely due to caffeine and acidic compounds within the soda.

But what is it about these drinks that causes us to crave the chorus of bubbles exploding on our tongue? Weirdly enough, it turns out that it has very little to do with the bubbles after all. As the carbon dioxide hits your tongue, an enzyme in your saliva called carbonic anhydrase quickly converts the CO2 into an acid in your mouth, giving it an astringent ‘bite’. This was proven out in a series of experiments by Bryant and Wise in which they took participants into a hyperbaric chamber (simulating high pressures) and gave them seltzer water. In the high pressure environment, the bubbles remained trapped in the liquid and never “fizzed” on the participants tongue, yet they all reported a characteristic bite from the carbonated drinks.

So I guess I’m not a bubbles addict, I’m an acid addict?