Tastes Cool

Purpose: The tobacco industry makes attempts to push taste as a factor in tobacco use. The reality about tobacco is that it reduces one’s sense of smell and sensitivity in the mouth. The taste buds on the tongue possess keen discrimination capacity and can identify hundreds of different kinds of flavors. When a person smokes, these taste buds and sense of smell are dulled and one is not able to fully appreciate the taste of food. This activity will help participants develop an awareness of how a person’s taste buds are affected by smoking.

Materials:

· 2 Life Savers (various flavors) for each person, plus a few extras. Get the larger bags that have the Life Savers individually wrapped.

· 1 lunch sack per team

· 1 small paper cup per person

· Enough orange juice for each person to have a drink

· Masking tape

· A watch with a second hand

· Blindfolds

Activity: Take a variety of flavors of candy and put about 9 pieces in each sack. Use the masking tape to mark a starting line and an ending line. Divide your group into teams of approximately 6 people. Explain that they will be tasting a candy Life Saver and trying to guess the flavor. Give one person from teach team the paper sack and have them stand at the end of the line. Have the other 5 team participants line up in a single file line behind the starting line. Assign a person on each team to keep track of the points.

Have the person with the sack take one piece of candy out of the sack, but be sure that they don’t show it to anyone. To begin, have the first person in the line walk down to the person holding the candy. When they arrive, they need to put a blindfold on or close their eyes, take a piece of candy, unwrap it, and put it in their mouth. As soon as the person eating the candy thinks they know what flavor they are eating, then they are to whisper their guess in the ear of the person who gave them the candy. If they are right on the first try, the team receives one point. If they are incorrect, then they must guess again. If they get it right on the second try, they get two points. If they have to guess a third time, then it is worth three points. After three tries they are not allowed to guess again.

The person who was holding the sack now goes to the end of their team’s line. The person who was eating the candy becomes the sack holder and the next person in line is now the guesser. Play the game until everyone has had a turn. Keep track of how much time it takes each team. Add the number of points they scored with the amount of seconds that it took them to complete the activity and that is their total score. Low score wins.

Repeat the activity. This time have the person who will be eating the candy take a large drink of orange juice right before they eat the candy. Be sure that you keep track of the time that it takes the team to complete the round. Compare the time with the first round.

Processing:

1. How hard was it to guess the correct flavor?

2. Did not being able to smell the candy have any impact on your ability to guess? Why or why not?

3. How quickly were you able to guess the correct flavor?

4. Which round took longer, the first or the second round? Why?

5. How important is flavor to your enjoyment of food? Explain.

6. If you tasted less favor, would food be less enjoyable? Explain.

7. How did the orange juice affect your ability to taste the flavor?

8. How can this activity relate to smoking?

9. While orange juice temporarily affects your taste buds, what does tobacco do?

Resource: More Activities that Teach, Tom Jackson