Teresa Lazzarotti, age 12, of Staten Island, NY for her queston:

Where are our taste buds?

The taste buds are tiny bumps in the skin of the tongue. They are little spots to shelter nerve endings which send scraps of information to the brain. The information they gather comes from chemicals dissolved in our food and they tell the brain whether the food has a sweet or a sour taste, a bitter or salty taste.

A flavor is usually a blend of several different tastes. The sensitive buds on the tip, the sides and the back of the tongue react to different chemicals and the information sent to the brain is a mixture in various proportion of sweet and sour, salty and bitter.