Sweetness Lab

Sweetness Lab

Brandon Yuen

In this lab, we asked the question, “Which carbohydrates taste sweet and which ones don’t?” My hypothesis was that if the one ringed carbohydrates would taste sweeter, then the glucose should also taste sweeter. I thought fructose, sucrose, and maltose would taste sweet, while galactose, lactose, cellulose, and starch wouldn’t taste sweet. We found that glucose, fructose, and galactose tasted the sweetest, while starch and cellulose, the three or more ringed carbohydrates, tasted less sweet. This result was likely caused by the number of rings each carbohydrate has. The monosaccharides tested the sweetest, the disaccharides less sweet, and finally the polysaccharides, which were the least sweet.

While our hypothesis was supported by our data, there could have been errors due to the difference of taste of different people. Some people could be used to more sugar, while others are used to less. That would make the degree of sweetness become higher or lower. Making groups of people who have or hadn’t eaten many sugary things in a while would help. People might also have just eaten something sweet or not unsweet, mixing up the results too. Eating something bland, like bread, before testing the sweetness of the carbohydrates would help get more accurate results. The degree of sweetness could also have been affected by the portion of the carbohydrate a person got. Giving each person exactly half a teaspoon would have made the results more accurate.

This lab was done to demonstrate how rings affect the taste of different carbohydrates. From the lab I learned that one ringed carbohydrates are sweeter than two and three ringed carbohydrates, which helps me understand the concept of carbohydrates more. Based on my experience from this lab, I know that starch would be less sweet than fructose or glucose. Organisms are affected by the types of carbohydrates from the different amount of energy storage of each one. Three-ringed carbohydrates would give more energy than one-ringed carbohydrates.