Unless you are an extreme traveler, visiting exotic lands and sampling foreign foods, there is rarely a time when we get completely surprised by flavor. That is until we take away some of our senses. There is a game that can be played that does just this very thing. It is based around jelly beans, the kind with really detailed flavors.
In this game, you spin the arrow which lands on a category. You are presented with two options for a potential flavor, one yummy, one horrific! Both beans look identical and have no smell. You do not know which one you got until you put it in your mouth. On guard, you prepare for the worst yet hope for the best. It takes us a few chews to totally figure out which it is.
The reactions are hilarious. It’s so very Harry Potter! This game demonstrates how our senses, smell and sight, influence our taste and food experience. When these are not present and we go in blind and without smell, we rely only on our taste buds. This is not common and this game challenges our comfort zone with eating. A true family classic. (Maybe just in my family).
Would you play this game and risk possibly putting a “barf” flavored jelly bean in your mouth? Do you ever taste foods blindly? Have you ever experienced how long it takes us to identify even those flavors we eat daily when they are presented out of context?
