No Saliva Means No Taste (Brilliant Biology Experiments)

You will need:

1. A few friends (to test your theory on)
2. Blindfold
3. Paper towels (kitchen paper tissues)
4. Dry food-items (such as cookies, crackers, etc.)
5. Drinking water

Find out the importance of saliva through this experiment.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Ask your friends to drink a little water and rinse their mouths clean.
2. Blindfold them. Give them each a paper towel and ask them to dry their tongues so that no saliva may remain on their tongues.
3. Let them know that they will be given a few dry food-items to taste which you will place on their tongues. They should guess the taste.
4. Make sure that there isn’t any saliva on their tongues for your experiment to be successful.
5. Break pieces of cookies or crackers and ask them to open their mouths. Place them on their tongues directly.
6. Ask them to guess what they have tasted. Next, give them a little water and repeat the experiment with another food-item.

RESULT

Saliva plays an important role. Apart from keeping the mouth moist and helping with the digestion process, the chemicals in the saliva also help to dissolve the food we eat so that the taste bud receptors in the mouth may detect the flavour of the food.