Taste and smell challenge

Can you tell the difference between tastes if you can’t smell what you are eating? This fun kids’ science experiment looks at what happens when we take away the ability to smell and what happens to our brain’s ability to tell the difference between certain foods. It’s a fun, easy and simple kids’ science project and you don’t need anything special for it – just some food and your nose!

What you need:

• Small slice of peeled nectarine or peach
• Small slice of peeled pear
• Small slice of peeled potato
• Small slice of peeled apple

Number of players:
1+

Activity:

Mix the slices of fruit and potato in a plastic bowl.

Close your eyes and pick a piece and smell it. Take note of what you smell.

Bring the piece to your mouth and taste it. Take note of what you taste.

Now pick another piece and repeat the observations.

Open your eyes and note what you ate. Repeat the experiment but this time hold your nose so you cannot smell the food, only taste it.

What differences can you detect?

Notes

• While your sense of taste can identify the basic elements such as sweet, bitter, sour and salty, you need to combine your sense of smell to be able to identify most individual tastes.
• This is because your nose and mouth are connected through the same airway, meaning you taste and smell foods at the same time.