Most people are aware that smell and taste work together. If you’ve ever had a stuffed up nose, then you’ve probably noticed that your food seems to have less flavor. A demonstration of how smell affects taste will help demonstrate this to students.
For this demonstration, you will want some foods with similar textures but different tastes. Some suggestions are given below, but you can substitute others.
How Smell Affects Taste
Materials
- Blindfold
- Foods such as carrot, potato, onion, apple cut into similar sized pieces
Procedure
- Have the student put on the blindfold and hold his nose tightly.
- Put one of the food items in his mouth and have him guess what it is.
- Repeat with the other food items.
Notes
With the nose plugged, it is difficult to distinguish the different flavors. This is because of how smell affects taste. When the student stops holding his nose, he will probably recognize some of the flavors in his mouth, especially some of the stronger ones like onion.
Read more about the sense of smell:
Olfaction (from Wikipedia)
The Sense of Smell (Book for ages 7 and up)
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