Librarian Recommended

Food, glorious food!

We love it! Whether sweet, salty, spicy or sour everyone has a go-to, a favorite and, usually, something they just plain hate. Our senses of course, play a huge part in what we like, BUT how much of what we love or hate to eat is colored by our preconceived notions of what is good and what is yucky?

Food taste-testing programs are a great, fun, delicious way to test out our preconceived notions, have a lovely snack, and maybe, just maybe, expand our culinary horizons.

I have done several taste-tests, and I find these programs work best for teens and adults, but older kids can also partake if you are so inclined – I recommend these programs for ages 8 and up.

What You Will Need:

• Paper plates
• Food safe gloves
• A “backstage” area for plating your items that is out of sight of your patrons.
• Depending on where you live you may also need release forms, because some people may have food allergies, and some people WILL LIE ABOUT THESE! (More on that later).
• Stuff to eat. I have done a variety of these including:
  • Oreo cookies
  • Japanese Kit Kat bars
  • Pop Tarts
  • International potato chips

But really, you can taste test just about anything if you can find enough varieties of a thing.

You will also need to create some of kind of judging form but what you do will depend on your audience and whether you are just trying to rate flavors or if you want the group to also try to guess the flavors of what you are serving.

Depending on your library’s rules and local regulations, you may also need to provide some kind of food allergy related release to be signed before the program, especially if your tasters will be kids or teens, as they will not always be forthcoming about food allergies but more on this later.

Tips and Tricks:

The first taste test I ever did was Oreo cookies. I purchased 12 different varieties and served them to a teen audience. They had to not only give the cookie a rating on a scale from 1-10 but also try to guess what flavor the filling was supposed to be.

When we did international potato chips, I took an approach closer to Good Mythical Morning, and the teens had to guess the flavor, give a rating from 1-10, and ALSO try to guess which country of origin the chips were from.

Please keep in mind that if you are doing cookies, Pop Tarts or other candies, the sugar ingestion is going to be WILD. ESPECIALLY with kids and teens you could be looking at a sugar rush on an astronomical level so be prepared for chaos.

When I did pop tarts for example, each teen got 1/4 of a pop tart… times 12. This means each teen ended up eating at least 3 full tarts plus more they scammed off their buddies who didn’t want theirs (this was pre-Covid so they would share food a LOT). Oreo day meant they ate TWELVE cookies.

This is why my coworker and I decided at the time “no more sugar for a while” and did chips instead.

We were not required at my library to have releases signed, so the first go round we had to trust our teens to let us know if they had allergies. During the Oreo challenge, I asked everyone if they were allergic to any foods and they all said no. The FIRST COOKIE that was consumed was a cinnamon flavor and one girl immediately said to us “um, does this have cinnamon???”

Turned out she was horrifically allergic but did not “consider cinnamon, like, a food-food, so I didn’t think it would matter.” Luckily she had an epi pen on her, and her parent was VERY understanding (though she did get grounded for being so careless). After this we made sure to get releases even if they were not required.

For each food we gave small prizes for best overall guesser, and crowned a favorite as well as decide on the “least best” option and then published the results on our social media channels.

Overall, taste tests are some of the most fun, wacky and social programs we have ever done. I highly recommend for teens and adults.