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Food and
Human Senses
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What Influences Food Choices?

■ Culture and Geography

■ Emotions and Psychology

■ Beliefs

■ Health Concerns

■ Food Costs

■ Technology
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Sensory Evaluation: A Scientific
Approach
■Sensory evaluation – scientifically testing food, using the human
senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing.

■ Sensory characteristics – the qualities of a food indentified by the

senses. How it looks, tastes, smells, sounds and feels when eaten.

■ Sensory - having to do with the senses of sight, taste, hearing, touch -

judgement of quality based on sensory data

■ Organolepsis - subject to judgement by the senses

■ Senses - the means of receiving of all information

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The senses – the basics
• Sight, smell, hearing, taste and
touch
• Flavour (taste and aroma/odour),
appearance and texture
• Taste: sweet, sour, bitter, salt and
umami
• Taste/odour associated with a food,
e.g. meaty, garlicky
• Intensity of taste, aroma and texture
• Sensory vocabulary development.
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The Chemical
Senses
● Sight- Vision
● Taste - Gustation
● Smell - Olfaction
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Mechanical
Senses
■ Touching - Tactile
Senses
■ Hearing - Sound
■ Kinesthesis - Motion
■ Equilibrium - Balance
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Human Senses from
Neurological Sciences
■ 6 additional Sense (11 senses altogether)

1. Nioception - Pain

2. Equilibraception - Balance

3. Propioception and Kinesthesia - joint motion and acceleration

4. Thermoception - temperature differences

5. Magnetoception - direction

6. Sense of Time
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Flavor and Appearance

■ Flavor – distinctive quality that comes from a food’s

unique blend of appearance, taste, odor, feel, and sound.

Appearance-Based on habit and preconceived notions

■ Garnish- a decorative arrangement added to food or drink

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Taste System
■ Tongue is the main receptor

■ Papillae - gives the tongue a rough

structure with raised protrusions on
the surface

■ Fungiform Papillae

■ Filiform Papillae

■ Foliate Papillae

■ Circumvallate Papillae

■ Taste buds are located in all the

papillae except for the Filiform
Papillae

■ Tongue contains approximately

10,000 taste buds.
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Taste
- is expressed in terms of a food
being
Sweet Cool Bitter
Umami Zesty Warm
Hot Tangy Sour
Rich Salty Bland Rancid
Tart. Acidic Strong
Citrus Mild Savoury
Spicy Metallic Weak
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Five Tastes
● Sweet - Due to alcohol (OH) groups, detected
quickly, on the tip of tongue
● Salty-Sodium ion modified by Chloride, detected
quickly, on tip of tongue
● Sour-Acid, due to hydrogen ions, detected on
side of tongue
● Bitter-taste buds at back of tongue
● Umami-savory, glutamate that occurs naturally
in food. Some examples of these foods are
parmesan cheese, bacon bits, soy sauce, meat,
ketchup, from flavor enhancers such as MSG
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Umami and Japan

• Umami was discovered by Dr Kikunae

Ikeda, from Tokyo Imperial University,
Japan, in 1908. He undertook research
into Dashi, a traditional Japanese stock
made from kombu (kelp).

Japanese miso Clear Japanese Nishime

soup soup with shrimp
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Taste
Sensitivity
• Taste affected by other stimuli
• Time: Location of taste buds
• Threshold-Concentration required for substance
identification
• Sub-threshold-Substance not identified, but will affect
perception of another taste

Effect of Sub-threshold
Substances
● Salt-> Increases sweet, decreases sour
● Sour->Increases salty, decreases sweet
● Sweet->Decreases salt, decreases bitter
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Temperature and Taste
● Affects flavor, warm foods taste stronger
and sweeter than cold foods
● Salt stronger in warm foods
● Volatility of substances increase at warm
temperatures, so they smell stronger-
pungency
● Taste buds most receptive at temperatures
between 68-860F
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Taste and Age

● Varies over the lifespan

● Highest taste sensitivity occurs in
babies
● Number of taste cells in humans
declines with age
● Serious decline in taste cell numbers
begins ~45 y.o.
● By 70 greatly lowered ability to taste
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Psychological Factors
● Flavor perceptions based on color,
color intensity, texture (thickness)
● General health and well-being
● Time of day
● Adaptation-Previous exposure to
substance, especially salt tastes (salt
and resalt foods)
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Comparison
Chart
Bitter
■ Coffee, bitter melon, unsweetened
cocoa, citrus peels.
■ Bitterness of substances is
compared with bitter taste
threshold of quinine which is 1.
■ Unpleasant and disagreeable taste.
■ Bitter flavors are recognized by
taste buds at the back of tongue,
throat and palate.
Sour
■ Lemon, orange, grape, melon,
wine and sour milk.
■ Sourness taste threshold is
rated with respect to dilute
hydrochloric acid which has a
value of 1.
■ Sharp taste that indicates
acidity of substance.
■ Taste buds at the sides of
tongue recognize sour taste.
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Taste and Odor
■ Taste blind- unable to
distinguish between the flavors of
some foods. (if you have a cold,
you can’t taste your food)
■ Taste buds – sensory organs
located on various parts of the
tongue
■ Monosodium glutamate – a salt
that interacts with other
ingredients to enhance salty and
sour tastes.
■ Olfactory – related to the sense
of smell
■ Volatile – substances that are
easily changed into vapor when
heated and add to the odor.
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Smell/Odou
r■ The nose detects volatile aromas released from food
■ Odor and taste of a food together produce the flavor of a
food. Due to this mechanism, people suffering from cold find
it difficult to determine the flavors in foods

Aromatic Pungent Spicy

Woody Floral Bland Green
Citrus-like Earth Rancid
Savoury Leathery Rotten Tart
Oily Creamy Acrid Strong
Mild Buttery Musty Weak
Scented Mossy Fragrant
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The Olfactory System

1. Odorants bind to receptors.

2. Olfactory receptor cells are activated and send
electrical signals
3. The signals are relayed via converged axons.
4. The signals are transmitted to tiger regions of the
brain.
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The Olfactory System
• As we breathe in air through our nostrils, we
inhale airborne chemical molecules, which are
detected by the 10 million to 20 million receptor
cells embedded in the olfactory membrane of the
upper nasal passage.
• The olfactory receptor cells are topped with
tentacle-like protrusions that contain receptor
proteins.
• When an odour receptor is stimulated, the
membrane sends neural messages up the olfactory
nerve to the brain
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Science of Smell:
Olfaction
■ Microsmatic- the absence of keen sense of smell
as it is not crucial for human survival.

■ Human can discriminate among 100,000 but they

cannot label them accurately.

■ Few signals from the olfactory bulb directly go to

the amygdala in the brain, an area that is
relevant to emotions and some of the
hippocampus, which is involved in memory.

■ Hence, we sometimes associate few smells in our

memory with specific emotion.
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Texture - Tactile
● Qualities felt with fingers, tongue, palate,
teeth
● Index of quality
● Smoothness, stickiness, graininess
● Crispness, crunch
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Texture - Tactile
■ Texture – soft, brittle, grainy, chewy, hard, tender,
dry, etc…
■ Mouthfeel – how a food feels in the mouth
■ Sound – crunchy foods need to sound crunchy,
crackers you don’t want to be soggy.
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SENSORY PROCESS
As all food products have a range of attributes and dimensions, the

parameters usually studied in sensory evaluation are

• Visual: package appearance, product appearance, color, shape

size etc. Appearance plays an important part in helping to

determine our first reaction to a food.

• Tactile / Touch: Product feel, temperature, texture, softness etc.

Texture is assessed through touch and physical contact with

food. The resistance to chewing also affects texture, e.g.

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SENSORY PROCESS
•The mouth also senses the temperature of the food, which
plays an important stimulus, e.g. cold ice cream, warm toast,
hot soup etc.

•Olfactory: product Aroma and Flavour.

•Auditory: sound when consumed – crisp, crunchy etc.

•There are various methods to conduct sensory analysis of

foods.

•Based on the test method, samples are prepared and panel

members are chosen.
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SENSORY PERCEPTION OF A FOOD SAMPLE

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Sensory Evaluation

■ Sensory evaluation panels – groups of people who evaluate

food samples

■ Three main groups

■ Highly trained experts
■ Laboratory panels
■ Consumer panels
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Uniform Evaluations

■ Minimize distractions – testing takes place in a controlled

atmosphere. Light and temperature are kept constant.

■ Minimize bias – researchers may mask irrelevant

characteristics.

■ Objective Evaluations – offer a greater degree of control and

consistency.