My little smarties have been waiting impatiently for this! They love food tasting. I can’t say they are very adventurous but at least at the sight of “nice looking” food, they can’t wait to have a taste of it. I don’t have much food for them to taste though but just some condiments that we usually can find it in the kitchen for this week’s topic.
The kids were showing me that they were ready for “food tasting” by sticking out their tongue. Didn’t manage to catch the little one’s tongue though…She was too fast for me! LOL!
We learnt about tongue and different types of taste that our taste bud can “feel”. All the while we have known that we have 4 common basic kind of tastes. After doing some research, there is an additional taste called “umami” that our tongue can taste too. What is umami? It is the taste of broth from those savoury dishes that evoke pleasant emotions in most people. They are a signal that the food is rich in protein and this flavor has been recognized as the fifth basic taste in addition to the four better known tastes of sweet, sour, bitter and salty.
On top of that, do you know that “hot” or “spicy” which we often described as a taste is actually not considered taste? It is just a pain signal sent to our nerves. It causes the sensation of pain and heat; this does not happen through our sensory cells specialised for taste. Complicated? Maybe a little. Hence, in this topic, I did not add in any umami taste and no food tasting of chilli or pepper. All we have is the 4 basic taste that we have always know about. We will explain more to the kids once they have “digested” the 4 basic taste.
Over here, we have the hands-on activities to get to know more and summarise/review what we have learnt.
Last but not least, colouring activity for the kids!
Can you identify what’s in the above picture? Yes…we love salty french fries. How about you?