The Sweetest Lab

     In this lab we asked the question, "How does the structure of a carbohydrate affect its taste?" I found that the monosaccharides were the sweetest, and the polysaccharides were the most bland. Fructose, which I ranked 180/200 on degree of sweetness, was the most sugary tasting carbohydrate. Its snow white grains tasted like extremely sweet sugar. While the white, chalky starch was a very tasteless and unpleasant polysaccharide to eat, having a sweetness degree of 0/200. As I learned from the "Miniature Biology" vodcast, monosaccharides are simple sugars consisting of one ring. Whereas Polysaccharides consist of 3 or more rings and taste starchy or plain. This data supports my claim that monosaccharides are the sweetest.
    Our data may contradict expected results because we sampled the polysaccharides first instead of the monosaccharides, which could have affected our taste buds. The polysaccharides are bland and could have lead us to think that the monosaccharides and disaccharides tasted sweeter than they usually do. Due to these errors, in future experiments I would recommend clarifying that students should taste the monosaccharides first.

     This lab was done to demonstrate how the structure of a carbohydrate does in fact affect its taste. From this lab I learned that monosaccharides are sweeter than disaccharides and polysaccharides. This helps me understand the concept of the different structures of carbohydrates. Based on my experience from this lab, I can remember that a sweet carbohydrate, such as fructose, is a monosaccharide, and a bland carbohydrate like cellulose, is a polysaccharide.