The reason why I chose this experiment was because I was wondering if it would matter if you like something while knowing that you could have gotten something worse.  The two kinds of candy (the favorite food) that I picked to use were Coffee Crisp and smarties, and the one kind of bread (the worse food) that I used was whole grain.  How I did the experiment is down below, but I forgot to give them water in between foods.

Procedure

Step 1: Have someone you know agree to do this experiment with you.

Step 2: Have them, without knowing that there is a bread, eat candy. Then repeat, but with bread instead of candy.

Step 3: Have them record their satisfaction level after eating each food.

Step 4: Sit them down and put a food that they like(candy) and a food that they don’t like as much(bread) in front of them.

Step 5: Have them eat candy, and have them record how they liked it on a scale. Then put another sample of candy on the table, have them wash out their mouth with water to prevent the results from being messed up.

Step 6: Do Step 5, but with bread instead of candy.

The results are recorded down below.

Analysis

Conclusion

So, as the average score shows, on the average most people feel better about eating a tasty food while knowing that they could have gotten bland food than when they only ate the tasty food. One out of the five people did not see the difference. A couple of ways and how these ways could have made the experiment better- get more people to volunteer, this would make the info more accurate; do the experiment in a room where there are no other people, other people can effect results with their comments; put the foods on plates or in containers to pass to the test subject, you would probably prefer to eat food on plated instead of being handed the food; and have the same amount of females do the experiment as males, females might have different results than males.  Of course, this was a project based on bread and candy, so this could vary for different foods.

Interview
Using Gmail, I had asked to interview a person who wrote a book about taste, she said that she was willing to answer my questions, and I gave her my questions.  The questions that I have asked her are written down below.

1. How much do you know about how the human sense of taste works?  Answer—  Obviously, I think taste is pretty important or I wouldn’t have written a book about it. All the senses are important, and I was interested in taste because in philosophical tradition, it is often dismissed as too “subjective” to mean very much. A lot of the book is devoted to arguing against that position.
   

2. Does eating a food while knowing you could have gotten a different food affect how your eating experience?  Answer—
   That also gives you a sense of why I wrote a book on taste. But there is an additional reason: I work mainly in aesthetics, and in that field “taste” is a dominant metaphor (aesthetic taste, good taste, bad taste, etc.) In its metaphoric usage, the literal sense of taste is discarded. So I set out to examine just why this is, arguing that in fact this indicates a misunderstanding of the function and significance of literal taste experiences (i.e. eating and drinking).
   

3. How important do you think that taste is?  Answer—  I’m not sure I understand your last question. One eats different sorts of things, so I guess if I discover I missed an opportunity to eat something different, I would just try it out the next time the occasion arose.