Thread: tasting: from the biology section

Ok from a discussion in the biology section emerged this experiment:

There seem to be three factors that together determine whether we like the taste of something or not: characteristics of the object itself; the nose (the smell of food interferes with it's taste, as proven by the fact that many people who have a cold don't taste as much as usual); the brain (through associations with the object and synthesis of the different imputs from the senses).

Which of these factors is most important?

Test: Take three candies with the same flavour. Add a bad smell to one of these candies, and mess with the appearance and texture of another. Leave the third candy as it is. Feed these candies to someone else (your little brother or so :wink: ), which one tastes worst?

Who's curious enough to try it out?

me. . . but my brother says"don't tke candy form strangers..."

and over in euorpe ..candy is called sweets... or bonbons....

but that seems good plan to try .. me must try

oh. . but why chose candy...why not spinage? or sweetcorn? .. or even a lamb chop?

ok.. i'm gonna try that ..

i havnt tried it yet but i have a feeling the bad smelling one will taste the worst....how do u make candy smell bad??

Yea that's a bit tricky, making a candy smell bad while not making it unhealthy for the test-person. Some vegetables smell really bad when being cooked (like sprouts), maybe drenching the candy in this smell will give us the right effect.

i think this is an experiment worth trying, hope it wont affect the taste as well - draining it in sprout juice or whatever foul smelling vegatable remainders... yesimagine if u could get a sweet that looksand feels EXACTLY like an eyeball and smells a bit funny to! but is a sweet and tasteslike one?? would people still eat it? i wonder i think we rely on our senses to warn us against eating funny things i dont know...i think i should try out your experiment

Would be really cool, I'm still very curious about this :-D

You could give people:
-a normal candy in a neutral environment
-a normal candy in an unpleasent environment (show them a distasteful picture while they're eating the candy)
-a smelly candy in a neutral environment.

While they're eating you can ask them to rate the taste of the candy in a scale from 1 to 10 or so.

A good trick is to fool the test-person about the objective of the experiment. For example, say "first I let you eat a candy, then we'll do a test" so they don't expect the candy itself to be the experiment :wink:

You could heavily disguise the candy, say as some disgusting matter, blindfold them, then show them what they have eaten, then film them secretely next time they follow a dog along the sidewalk. :wink:

As for making it smell bad, why not put the 'smell' on the wrapper, so that it is transferred to the fingers, ask your victim to 'smell' the candy, as they approach the mouth the pungent smell will be detected but the candy will not have been altered. Make this the last one to be tasted, or feed subsequent items via a spoon or tongs.