If your sense of smell affects how well you taste, can you taste if you were eating in a vacuum?

Question

It's a daft question i know, but one that's been bugging me for days. Any ideas?

Answer 1

There's an easier question which you might have asked to get what you wanted: How does food taste to people who have lost their sense of smell?
I happen to know the answer to this because my father lost his sense of smell many years ago in a motorcyle accident. Since then things have certainly tasted different to him...
Its not that smell affects how well you taste, it's just that taste as a whole is a mixture of the sensations you get from the receptors on your tongue (the 4-5 basic flavours: salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami or meaty) and the aromas sensed at the same time by your nasal receptors - all the more complex things that come off your food as you are manipulating it, bringing it to your mouth and chewing it - for example, the flowery aromas of fruit, the powerful tangy aromas of fried onions, etc.
Someone without a sense of smell can only taste with the tongue, and according to my father, the resulting experience depends on what you're eating. Some things which have a lot of smell in them taste very flat to him, and other things, which don't smell of much at all (a good example is sushi) taste more or less the same as they tasted before.
Eating when your nose is heavily blocked up during a cold, or just pinched shut, should give you more or less a similar experience!

Answer 2

hmmm my guess would be if your in a vacuum you'd probably be in too much pain or dead to try to eat. but there is something you can try, pinch your nose when eating something and you'll find the food has little to no taste, and when you unpinch your nose the taste should pop right back

Answer 3

Some tastes need the support of smelling facility: some don't!

Answer 4

yes just not as well, thats why airplane food sucks cos they have to salt it more so there is a ritcher taste.

Answer 5

you wouldnt be able to taste much as sucking a vaccum tends to suffocate

Answer 6

I think our eyes would explode, and your body would expand until it exploded before you could eat anything

Answer 7

yes - u wld taste de dust

Answer 8

frist of all, tell me how can you fit into a vacuum