When you eat something, how do you know what it tastes like? Well, your taste buds, of course! Does anything else help you know what you’re tasting? Today, we are going to find out in this cool experiment!
What you need:
- 3 different flavors of yogurt
- A spoon
Steps:
- Close your eyes and plug your nose.
- Have your partner feed you each flavor of yogurt.
- See if you can identify each flavor or yogurt correctly. Have your partner tell you if you are correct in your guess.
What science is involved with this experiment?
Chances are, you had trouble determining which flavor was which. This is because our mouths use both smell and taste buds to help us taste our food. Our mouths and tongues have taste buds, and these are receptors for the five basic flavors — sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. Our tongues evolved to probe only a few basic tastes in order to quickly identify toxins, which in nature are often bitter or sour. The complexity of flavors comes from the sense of smell operating in the back of the nasal cavities. When you plugged your nose to eat the yogurt, your sense of smell did not work as well, and it was harder to determine the flavors of the yogurt.