Find out if other senses impact what you taste
1. Prepare
Place the fruit and vegetable cubes on a plate. Keep track of which cube is which.
Blindfold your experiment partner so that they can't tell what the fruit or vegetables are by sight. Ask them to hold their nose to block their sense of smell.
2. Taste
Hand your experiment partner one vegetable cube at a time to taste.
Ask them to guess what fruit or vegetable it is.
3. Switch
Now it's your turn to take the taste test! Repeat the experiment with you as the taster.
4. Compare
When you're both done going through all the cubes, compare your scores. The chances are that both of you made a few wrong guesses!
Why was it so hard to tell one food from another with a similar texture? The secret is inside your nose! The taste buds on your tongue—those tiny bumps on the surface—can only identify sweet sour salty bitter and umami (a word to describe the savoury taste found in things like smoked meats and fish). The rest of the information about the taste of food comes from its odour. So without being able to smell you can't taste! Now you know why food has no taste when you have a cold.