The Sugar Sensation
Essential Questions
How do our senses adapt to our environment?
How do changes in our senses effect our choice and perception?
What we hope you learn by the end of this lesson:
Our sense of taste starts on the tongue and ends in the brain.
Both our taste buds and brain can adapt, and the dramatic increase in sugar consumption could lead to long-term adaptations in our tongues and brains.
These changes could play a significant role in the increasing the rates of Type 2 Diabetes.
In this lesson, you will do a taste-test activity with your family or people you live with by preparing different solutions and asking people to rate the sweetness of the solutions. We will then analyze the data and learn about how our bodies sense sugar and how sugar consumption has changed over time.
Part 1: Taste Test: You will prepare the solutions, make a hypothesis, and conduct the taste test. (30-40 minutes)
Part 2: Sweet Video: Learn how we sense sugar and how sugar consumption has risen. (5 minutes)
Part 3: Analysis and Summing it Up. (20 minutes)
