Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Any good ideas? One I have in mind is whats the differnece in taste between diet/ not diet. maybe go into taste buds revolving around salty, tangy, sour, etc. Any ideas? I havent seen anything on science buddies about it, and I need a research paper adn everything. HELP : ]

Hi michael,

It appears that you're interested in how different foods taste. Can you say more about what you mean by "diet / non-diet"? Do you mean by "diet" what we eat? Or do you mean people who are on a diet, trying to lose weight?

Bill

I would start by looking at the difference between ingredients of diet food versus non-diet food. Find out what makes a food a diet food. You should consider calories, fats, and other nutritional information that could help you in your investigation.

If you are interested in the difference in taste between regular (non-diet) foods and "diet foods," an intriguing experiment would be to test whether people can detect whether a food is "diet" or "regular" just by tasting it. For example, you could compare "light"/"diet"/"low fat" versions vs regular versions of items such as yogurt, cream cheese, potato chips, ice cream, popsicles, etc.

It might then also be interesting to see if a particular ingredient, such as sugar or salt, disguises the fact that a food is "diet food." For example, "fat free" potato chips might be just as salty and taste fine. But "fat free" chips that are low salt might taste different. So it's important to pay attention to all of the ingredients.

Bill