Taste Test

Health Science
Time 45 minutes
Age 7 & up
Group Size 4 or more
Tags Body, Flavor, Senses,   more...
Taste Tongue

What's your favorite flavor and how does your tongue know?

There are many activities in this curriculum that involve cooking—and that means tasting too. Getting kids in tune with their taste buds can help them to use their tongues not just as a way of enjoying what they make, but also to use their sense of taste as another tool for exploring the world around them.

Preparation

  1. In soda bottles or other containers, mix up separate solutions of salt water, sugar water and cocoa water. Taste them to make sure the flavors are unmistakable—the salt water should taste pretty salty, the cocoa water should taste quite bitter, etc. Add more material if the solution is not strong enough; more water if it’s too strong. The lemon juice does not need to be mixed with water.
  2. Create a set of cups for each team (teams of 2) with all 4 solutions in them. Each team should have 1 “salty” cup, one “sour” cup, one “sweet” cup and one “bitter” cup. These cups don’t need a lot of liquid in them—1-2 inches deep is fine. Make sure to label the cups!
  3. Three more cups will be handed out to each team—one with 10 cotton swabs in it, and two with water in them so each child can rinse their mouths out in between tastes.
Taste Test
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Suggested Materials

  • Clear 9-ounce plastic cups (7 cups per team)
  • Cotton swabs (about 10 per team)
  • Sugar
  • Unsweetened cocoa
  • Salt
  • Concentrated lemon juice
  • Small mirrors (1 per child if possible)
  • Paper
1

Make it Matter

Opening Discussion

Ask your students if they can name the flavors that their tongue can taste. When they come up with sweet, salty, sour and bitter, take a poll—whose favorite taste is salty? Whose is sour? Record the results.

The Challenge

Make a map of your tongue!

2

Make it Happen

Doing the Activity

  1. Pair your students up in teams of 2.
  2. Have each child look carefully at their tongue in the mirror and draw an outline of it on a piece of paper. Do they notice anything about their tongues? Have them write down any observations. Using this outline, students will now create a “map” of their tongue.
  3. Each child should dip a cotton swab into a chosen solution, let’s say “salty” (they can decide which tastes they test and in which order). Then, sticking out their tongues (and keeping it out!), they should rub the salty swab all over their tongue and make note of which parts of their tongue are sensing “salty”. They should then write on the drawing of their tongue which part(s) that was. They can then rinse their mouths and repeat the test for sweet, sour and bitter, filling in their maps along the way.
3

Make it Click

Let’s Talk About It

After each child has made their first map, stop your students and bring them together to share their observations with each other. Have them post their maps up on a wall and compare, or you can draw a big tongue on a chalkboard or piece of chart paper and have each child mark on that tongue where they tasted sweet, salty, sour and bitter. This second option will give you one big classroom “tongue map”. Do they notice any patterns, or is each tongue different? Refer back to their earlier survey—does anyone want to change their vote for their favorite flavor?

4

Make it Better

Build On What They Talked About

Have your students return to their tables in pairs to try a new experiment. This time, one child will be the “taster”, and one will be the “tester”. The taster should sit in a chair with their eyes closed and their tongue sticking out. The tester should pick a flavor but not tell the taster what they’re choosing, dip a cotton swab in that flavor and rub it on the taster’s tongue. Can the taster guess the flavor? Next, have the tasters close their eyes, pinch their noses shut and repeat the test, again with a random flavor. Can they guess now?  What if they release their hold on their nose—is it easier to guess? Have them switch roles so each child has a chance to try.

Suggestions

  • Powdered cocoa and water are tough to mix. The easiest way is to put cocoa in a ½ liter soda bottle, pour water in, cover tightly and shake like crazy.
  • This activity focuses on the 4 common tastes that most kids can name. But there is a fifth taste bud on the tongue, and it’s a flavor most people haven’t heard of. In Japan, where this flavor has been known for a long time, it is called “Umami”. The closest word we have for it is “savory”, and it’s the taste you get with meat, asparagus and other “savory” or “meaty” foods. If you would like to add umami to this activity, you can mix monosodium glutamate (msg) with water. If you try it yourself, you’ll notice a subtle but distinct flavor. This solution will take a little more msg to make the flavor distinctly noticeable.
  • There is a common misconception that there is one “tongue map”, and that there are distinct taste buds only on certain areas of the tongue. This is not quite true – everyone’s tongue is different, and taste receptors can be in different places.
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