• Experiments using the sense of taste are fun for the person performing the experiment and for the taste tester. The tongue tastes different types of food on various parts of the tongue. Bitter foods are tasted on the back of the tongue, while sour foods are tasted on the sides. Sweet and salty foods are tasted on the tip of your tongue. The middle of your tongue does not have many taste buds.
  
  

Sense of Taste

• The sense of taste gives us pleasure when we eat. It makes food enjoyable or repulsive to eat. The tongue is able to taste foods that are salty, sour, sweet and bitter. These experiments will help you determine if the sense of smell is involved in the sense of taste. You can also experiment with foods to see if the taste changes when placed on the various sections of the tongue.
  
  

Experiment 1: Low Fat or Not

• For this experiment you will need four packages of snacks, two that are low fat, and two matching products that are not low fat. You will also need napkins, small sheets of paper to record answers on, and a poster board to record your results.
  
  For this experiment, the taste testers will eat four samples of snacks, two low fat, and two the traditional recipe. Products could include cookies such as a Snack Wells cookie, or low fat muffins. The key is to purchase both the low fat and traditional version in the same flavor.
  
  Prepare small sheets of paper. Begin by placing a small sample on each of four napkins. Label each napkin with numbers 1 through 4. Keep a key telling you which each sample is. After the taster has tested a sample, have her complete the sheet asking if it was a low fat or traditional sample and if there was any after taste noted.
  
  Ask at least 10 people to be a taste tester for you. You will be surprised how many people will not be able to identify the low fat samples. Create a table to further illustrate your findings.
  
  

Experiment 2: Tasting Food Without Your Nose

• The materials needed for this experiment include salt, water, paper cups, plastic spoons, cinnamon, sugar, limes, cooked Brussels sprouts, mild salsa, dry roasted peanuts, raw onion, candy mints, and a food processor.
  
  For this experiment, you are going to find out if foods taste differently when you have a cold. Begin by making a syrup out of the cinnamon, sugar and a little water, and grind up all other foods, adding a little water, if necessary. The trick is to get each sample into a similar consistency using the food processor.
  
  For this experiment your taste testers are going to try the samples twice. First, they will taste them with a clothes pin on their nose while blindfolded. The second time, they will only be blindfolded.
  
  As your testers taste each sample, see which foods they can identify when their can't use their sense of smell or sight, and record your results. Next, have them taste the sample again simply blindfolded, and record your results. Compare your results and graph them.