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Jay520 on 04 August 2012
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pezus said:
Jay520 said:
pezus said:
Andrespetmonkey said:
Jay520 said:
Andrespetmonkey said:


But then you won't be able to taste the snacks


why not?

When I block my nose I lose my sense of taste

This man is correct. About 90% of our "taste" is actually our smell. Do you not feel food is bland when you have a cold?


What about when you eat/drink odorless substances?

Perhaps having a cold directly blocks taste. Not inability to smell.

No, we even tested this in biology class by closing our eyes and then trying to guess what we were tasting and the results were that we couldn't do it for most things when our eyes+nose were closed, but if only our eyes were closed it was easy as pie. Some of the food did even have a strong flavor.

Of course, this doesn't go for everything (such as odorless drinks like you said). Try it on chocolate or coffee.

http://www.entnet.org/HealthInformation/smellTaste.cfm

Certain tastes combine with texture, temperature, and odor to produce a flavor that allows us to identify what we are eating.

Many flavors are recognized through the sense of smell. If you hold your nose while eating chocolate, for example, you will have trouble identifying the chocolate flavor, even though you can distinguish the food’s sweetness or bitterness. This is because the familiar flavor of chocolate is sensed largely by odor. So is the well known flavor of coffee. This is why a person who wishes to fully savor a delicious flavor (e.g., an expert chef testing his own creation) will exhale through his nose after each swallow.



Well then, there are two possible inferences I can make with that info. Either 1.) The foods I tasted didn't really need to be smelled, or 2.) The foods I tasted did need to be smelled...but I'm just a mutant. I personally hope for the latter.