Why does Heavy Water taste sweet?

Absolutely fascinating research. I really enjoy your enthusiasm for increasing knowledge in the world and your quest for truth. My partner and I don't support many creators month to month on Patreon but this video has certainly increased the feeling it's right to support your work :) You've certainly helped me understand lots of new things, especially now when learning about new things to do the thermodynamic calculations I always hear your voice saying "There are no free lunches." Your videos on Feminism helped me by showing that it was not a compatible view with looking at the merits of the idea, rather than some characteristic of the person expressing the idea, and that it is completely incompatible with a world where the free exchange of ideas, lively discussion and having equal opportunities are what should be the driving force for us as a species. I also love your debunking videos, which not only show junk science but also are teaching people to challenge the headline claims and at minimum do the "back of the envelope" calculations and the coronavirus analysis videos are a useful addition (on your second channel). Again I end with congratulations of your work on this new paper and all the people that contributed to enable the research to happen. Well done <3 :)

jcx

Yes, I have heard about this discovery by biochemists. They expected that heavy water is the same as pure water, tasteless and odorless, but they were wrong. And it's quite interesting that mice are unable to sense this difference.

VitAnyaNaked

Here is something interesting that you might not know. If you drink alcohol, the alcohol in the bloodstream is absorbed more quickly into some parts of the inner ear than others. Alcohol is less dense than water, and this results in a difference between the density of the fluids on the inside and outside of the semicircular canals. This in turn causes the canals to move out of their normal position and as a result they stop regulating balance correctly. This is why you lose your balance when you get drunk. A similar effect happens if you drink enough heavy water and for the same reason. The density of heavy water is higher than regular water and when enough of it gets from the bloodstream into the inner ear, the canals stop working properly. You don't get any of the other pleasing effects of alcohol intoxication, just the loss of balance. The interesting possibility is that you could create a density-compensated cocktail by adding a calculated amount of D2O to your alcoholic beverage to keep the density at 0.998 g/cc and avoid the balance problems. Maybe something you could experiment with, if you can afford it!