Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans are an interesting surprise. The package contains two jellybeans of the same color. One bean has a good flavor, like raspberry, and the other bean has a bad flavor, like a beetle. The game associated with the jellybeans is to find two of the same-colored jelly beans. You eat one, and your friend eats the other. One person will get the bad flavor, and one will get the good flavor.
I played this game with my sister for a long time and the only time it wasn't a bad idea was when one of us had a cold. When we had a cold our noses would be so stuffed up that we couldn't taste the bad-flavored jelly bean. The reason we couldn't taste the bad flavor is that our sense of smell and our sense of taste are connected. This is why we couldn't taste the bad flavor when we couldn't smell anything either.
When you eat something the 5,000- 10,000 taste buds in your mouth and the 50- 100 taste sensors on those taste buds are activated. When they are actuated they send one of five signals to the brain; sweet, spicy, bitter, sour, and umami. The combination of the signals your brain gets helps it decide what flavor is and eventually what the food you're eating is and if you like it. Besides the signals your taste buds give to your brain, flavor is also determined by smell. As you chew air is forced through your nasal passages and the food's odors are detected by hair-like cilia on the sensory nerves in your nose.
The Experiment is a little bit different this week. Grab a partner and a parent and a bunch of different foods. You'll be comparing food and see if you can figure out which one is which, so use foods of similar texture. For example:
Apple and Onions and Potatoes
Lemon and orange
Have an adult use a knife to cut each food into similar-sized bites.
Blindfold your partner and have them pinch their nose.
Feed them pieces of food and have them guess what they are eating.
Record if they got it right or wrong and compete against each other.
You can also do this with drinks. Use lemon juice and apple juice or Sprite and Pepsi.
When you pinch your nose your sense of taste becomes really depleted. You won't be able to tell the difference between lemon and apple juice or potatoes and onions. Or the difference between a grass-flavored jelly bean and a green apple one.
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