[originaltext] Everyone’s taste buds are different. That’s why some people c

Everyone’s taste buds are different. That’s why some people can swallow the spiciest peppers while others have no fondness for sweet desserts. Now a recent study suggests that taste-bud sensitivity may have something to do with the risk of obesity in children.
     (16)German researchers report that obese kids have less sensitive taste buds than their normal weight peers, and may therefore eat more food to get the same flavor sensation.
    The researchers looked at 193 healthy children aged 6 to 18. Roughly half the kids were normal weight and half were obese. For the study, researchers placed 22 taste strips on the children’s tongues, representing each of the five types of taste—sweet, sour, salty, spicy and bitter—at four levels of intensity, as well as two blank strips.(17)The participants were asked to identify each of the tastes, and also rank each taste strip’s level of intensity.
    Each taste was assigned a score added up to 20. Obese kids had a significantly more difficult time distinguishing between tastes, resulting in an average score of 12. 6, compared with an average of just over 14 for the normal weight kids.
     (18)Overall, kids had the easiest time identifying sweet and salty tastes; they found it harder to distinguish between salty and sour, and salty and spicy.(19)In general, girls and older children were the best at correctly identifying the various tastes. As most kids got older, their ability to differentiate between taste sensations improved, but not among obese children. And although all the kids correctly identified the different sweetness intensity levels, obese kids rated most of the higher-intensity taste strips as weaker than the normal weight kids did.
16. Why do obese kids eat more than their normal weight peers according to German researchers?
17. What were the participants in the research asked to do?
18. Which types of taste are easy to be identified by the kids?
19. Who had the best performance in correctly identifying the different tastes?