What's happening?

Why was it so hard to tell one food from another of similar texture? The secret is inside your nose! The taste buds on your tongue-those tiny bumps on the surface-can only identify sweet, sour, salty and bitter. The rest of the information about the taste of food comes from its characteristic odour. So without being able to smell, you can't taste!

Now you know why food has no taste when you have a cold in your nose.

• Return to the experiment.

Excerpt from The Jumbo Book of Science by the Ontario Science Centre, used by permission of Kids Can Press Ltd., Toronto.