Taste Test Science: Fool Your Tongue!

Our sense of smell is so tied up with our sense of taste that 70-75% of what we taste actually comes from our sense of smell! Have you ever had a cold, and food just tasted bland or boring? This was because you couldn’t smell it as well as taste it as it went into your mouth. In this experiment we are going to show how strongly our sense of smell controls what we taste.

• Apple
• Vanilla extract
• Cotton ball

What You Do:

1. Have your child take a bite of apple and pay close attention to how it tastes. Is it tart as tangy? Does it taste like an apple? Of course it does!
2. Now add several drops of vanilla extract to the cotton ball. 
3. Hold the cotton ball near, but not touching, your child's nose as you take a second bit of the apple. Continue to smell the cotton ball while you chew.

What Happened?

The first bite tasted like an apple should taste. The second seemed to taste like vanilla. Why? The nerve endings in the tongue only identify sweet, sour, salty and bitter - other sensations are due to smell. When the vanilla was stronger than the apple smell the apple "tasted" like vanilla.