Question

Sense 4 and 5: Taste and olfaction (10pts)

Test 1: Testing the link between smell and taste

1. Obtain a potato and an apple (or 2 other foods that have similar textures or two different flavored hard candies). Peel both the potato and apple and ask your partner to cut them up into equal sizes and then place them in separate storage containers. Add a picture of the foods you used!
2. Press both nostrils closed.
3. Using a toothpick, pick up a piece of food from the storage container and place it in your mouth. Can you identify what the food is by sucking on it (you don’t have to eat the food)?
4. Try the same experiment, but this time open your nostrils. Can you identify the food?
5. Repeat this experiment with the food in the other storage container.
6. Answer the following questions:

What foods did you use? Could you correctly identify the two foods with your nostrils closed? What role does smell play in taste?

Test 2: Olfactory adaptation

1. Obtain two smelly objects, such as a bottle of oil of peppermint, black walnut extract, isopropanol, or anything else that has a strong odor. Add a picture of the smelly things you used!
2. Press one nostril closed.
3. Hold one of the smelly objects under the open nostril.
4. Record the time it takes for the odor to disappear.
5. Repeat with the other nostril and note the time to adaptation.
6. Immediately remove the first smelly object and replace it with the second, which should smell very different, hopefully ☺
7. Answer the following questions:
   1. What smelly objects did you use? How long did it take to become adapted to the first smell in the first nostril? How long did it take to become adapted when you changed nostrils? Was it longer or shorter? Why?
   2. What happened when you replaced objects? Why?

Answer 1

Test 1

For this test, as stated in the question you should use two food material that are similar in texture. So, you can use melon and watermelon, if you want to use anything other than the combination of apple and potato.

Smell plays a very important role in taste.

So, in majority of the cases the food cannot be identied and differentiated if the texture is same and the nostrils of the eater are closed.

This is because closing both the nostrils and then eating the food chosen makes it very difficult to identify the food that is being eaten, that shows the importance of smell in taste.