It’s no secret that teenagers love snacks, whether salty or sweet.
At West Mesquite High School, AP biology teacher Melinda Evans is using that love of snacks to help her students understand how cells in the body communicate. She’s doing it with the help of a special tea.
The tea temporarily shuts down the taste buds that detect sweetness. Even if students eat straight sugar, they don’t taste anything sweet. Sugar substitutes? Just chemicals.
“You know, like those green juices, like it tasted like those, but like worse,” said student Bryan Acevedo.
It even changed how chips tasted for some students, with a few saying the chips seemed saltier than ever.
Understanding how the cells in our bodies talk to each other is an important foundation for learning how many medicines work—by turning on or off certain signals, they can help treat symptoms like stomach aches.
“It teaches how your cells respond to each other. Right now we’re learning cell communication, and this is all going on with cell signaling,” said student Shaffy Ogunseye. “If I’m not gonna get the taste I want, I’m not gonna eat it. So it’s gonna decrease the sugar intake I have.”
There were disagreements around the classroom over which foods tasted sweeter or saltier, but Evans says that’s part of the science too—how people perceive things differently.
“The more experience that they can get hands-on with science, I think the more love that they can have for science, and the appreciation that they can have for science in the natural world and how our world works, how their body works,” Evans said.
Evans admits science was her least favorite subject in school. She now uses what didn’t click for her then to help make the subject more accessible and memorable for today’s students.