BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — One of the biggest questions pops up around Mardi Gras — “Who has the best king cake in town?”

Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge is on a mission to find the answer through a study. The hospital said in a news release that chosen teams are taste-testing king cakes from four Baton Rouge bakeries every Friday.

To make it a true test, labels showing where the king cakes came from are hidden and each comes with a barcode that contains a six-question survey, according to OLOL. The study started on Jan. 27 and is slated to end on Feb. 17, just before Fat Tuesday.

Now, what compelled Baton Rouge researchers to do this?

“We’re trying to show that research can be fun and interesting,” said Christine LeBoeuf, senior director of research and grants at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System Office of Research and Grant Administration. “And that you can find out a lot of good information from even a simple study like this.”

The principal investigator of this study, a clinical research scientist with OLOL Children’s Hospital and LSU Health Sciences Center’s Pediatric Research J. Hunter Collins, Ph.D., said this study is to help people in Baton Rouge pick out the best king cake and “demystify” what the research office does.

“I came from a traditional research background, so it’s been really fascinating to see how different clinical research is,” Dr. Collins said. “You get to see an immediate impact from our studies on the patients the hospital is treating, and that’s really fascinating and so rewarding.”

The results of the research study will be released on Feb. 21. Researchers hope this fun, delicious study will be a yearly event.