Does smell affect your taste?

Problem: Will volunteers be able to recognize foods through a blind taste test with and without smell?

Hypothesis: My hypothesis was that smell does have an impact on the ways foods taste because when I’m sick and can’t smell; I usually can’t identify the food.

Procedure:

• 1. I asked for 10 volunteers to do a blind taste with and without smell.

  2. Each volunteer had to sign a permission form and confirmed they didn’t have any allergies.

  3. I gathered all the ingredients I would use in the experiment which were: lime juice, apple juice, mustard, maple syrup (thin), vanilla extract, italian dressing, plastic spoons, a nose plug, napkins, ¼ tsp measuring spoon, water, cups, and goggles with black paper covering them.

  4. Starting with the first volunteer, they would take a sip of water to cleanse their palate.

  5. Then, they would put on the nose plug and the googles to work as a blindfold.

  6. I would put ¼ tsp of the first ingredient which was apple juice on the spoon.

  7. The volunteer would taste the food and before they unplugged their nose, they would have to identify the food.

  8. They would take another sip of water.

  9. Without the nose plug, the volunteer would smell and taste the same food.

  10. Again, they would guess what the food was.

  11. I repeated this with the rest of the ingredients.

  12. I did the whole process with 10 volunteers.

Conclusion: In conclusion, I discovered that people do need their nose to taste and when the volunteers could smell they guessed more than half of the ingredients correct. On the other hand, with their noses’ plugged little to no foods were guessed correctly. My hypothesis was correct because people didn’t recognize the food without smell. The volunteers could recognize if the food was sweet, salty, or bitter without smell but couldn’t narrow it down to a single food. As soon as the volunteers took off their nose plug, they could tell what they were tasting. The results to my experiment are accurate because I repeated the process over with 6 different liquids and 10 different volunteers. I made sure half of the volunteers were kids and adults just to see if one age did better, but for the majority they were the same. The things I could change to make my project better would be to fine foods with identical textures. When I was picking ingredients for the volunteers to taste, I tried to find similar texture ingredients. I used liquids, but some were thicker than others, like syrup and mustard. I even used the thin kind of maple syrup to not give away the texture of the food but many people said it didn’t taste like normal syrup. Therefore, it was tricky to identify. Other from that, my project helped me learn that the sense of smell is a major factor on how things taste. Overall, my project was a success. Nose Knows!

Abstract:

I wanted to investigate if a person could identify a food without the sense of smell or sight. Does your nose really know? To do this, I asked for volunteers to taste 6 different foods, without and then with the sense of smell. 5 of the volunteers were kids and the other 5 were adults. The foods I used were lime juice, maple syrup (thin), apple juice, mustard, italian dressing, and vanilla extract. The foods were all liquids so the testers didn’t get confused on the texture. I predicted that smell does affect the way things taste because when I'm sick and can’t smell, the taste isn’t identified.

The first step in my experiment was asking for volunteers. I needed children and adults to do a blind taste test. They all signed a permission form and confirmed they didn’t have allergies. For the test, I had the volunteer take a sip of water. Then, they put on goggles with black paper covering them to work as a blindfold and used a nose plug so they couldn’t smell. Since their palette was cleansed, I could begin testing the six foods. I started with the apple juice. I put 1/4 tsp of the ingredient on a plastic spoon and put the spoon in their mouth. Before they could take a sip of water or unplug their nose they had to identify the food. I would then write yes or no depending on if their answer was correct. After the without smell test, the volunteer would take off their nose plug and take a drink of water. I would measure 1/4 tsp of the same ingredient and put it on the spoon. This time the volunteer was allowed to smell the liquid food. Without the nose plug, the volunteer smelled it and then I put it in their mouth. Again, they had to tell me what the food was. I repeated this with the same volunteer with maple syrup, vanilla extract, mustard, lime juice and italian dressing. Finally, I did the whole process with 10 people.

The data I collected shows that smell does in fact does affect your taste. Everyone’s total average of correct answers with smell was more than half. When their noses were plugged the correct answers were less than half. So most people guessed the food wrong when they couldn’t smell. The first five volunteers were all kids ranging from 10-15 years of age. The second half of my volunteers were adults. Four of the volunteers could not guess any of the ingredients correct without smell and six volunteers guessed only one correct. They did much better with the sense of smell. Four volunteers guessed 3 ingredients correct with smell and four guessed 4 correct. One volunteer guessed 5 correctly when allowed to smell. Lastly, volunteer 10 did the best out of all. He identified all the foods correctly with smell. With his nose plugged he even got 1 correct that many people didn't get correct either time, maple syrup. A few volunteers thought it was chocolate syrup. Some other participant guesses for another ingredient without smell, such as mustard, included ketchup, barbeque sauce, or horseradish. The volunteers for the most part guessed correctly with smell.

I learned that smell does have a huge impact on your taste. When the volunteer’s nose was unplugged they answered more than half correct. On the other hand, with their noses’ plugged little to no foods were guessed correctly. My hypothesis was correct because the average data proved that people didn’t recognize the food without smell but did with. The results are accurate because I repeated the process over with 6 different liquids and 10 different volunteers. I made sure half of the volunteers were kids and adults just to see if one age did better, but for the majority they were the same. The things I could change to make my project better would be to try to find the same texture foods. I tried to find similar texture ingredients so I used liquids, but some were thick like syrup and mustard. I even used the thin kind of maple syrup to not give away the food but many people said it didn’t taste like normal syrup. Therefore, it was tricky to identify. Other from that my project helped me learn the sense of smell is a major factor on how things taste. Overall, my project was a success. Nose Knows!