Does milk taste the same as orange juice? Of course not! Does fish taste like chicken? Not at all. How do you know? What tells you they are different? your tongue? Maybe you think so, but guess again 2 We do taste things with our tongues that's true. But the smell of food has a lot to do with its taste too. We taste foods with our noses as well as our tongues. In fact, the nose has more to do with taste than the tongue 3 Scientists say that your tongue can recognize only four tastes. It can tell if something is sweet, salty, sour (like vinegar, or bitter (like soap. That's all it can tell. To fine-tune our sense of taste we have to use our noses too 4 Think back to the last time you had a bad cold. Your food probably tasted very plain it seemed to have little taste at all. That wasn't because your tongue wasn't working. It was because your nose was congested. You couldn't smell the food and that made it seem tasteless. You can prove this to yourself by eating something while you pinch your nose shut. It won't seem to have much taste. 5 Here's another test to show how important the nose is in tasting. First, blindfold a friend. Then put a piece of potato in your friend's mouth and tell