DailyDirt: No Accounting For Taste?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Quantifying how our taste buds react to different ingredients isn't an easy task. It's hard enough to get 4 out of 5 dentists to agree on a toothpaste, so it's understandably difficult to get untrained taste testers to agree on what kind of flavors they prefer. The assumption that there is a single "best-tasting" formula for a particular food is unrealistic in many cases, anyway, as Malcolm Gladwell's popular TED talk on spaghetti sauces discusses. Still, food science has to take some kind of measurements, and here are just a few examples. If you have some more free time, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
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Filed Under: flavors, food, palate, recipes, scoville heat unit, senses, spicy, taste
Companies: ajinomoto


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  • identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 6 Jul 2012 @ 5:01pm

    Taste Is Actually (Mostly) Smell

    Most of the flavour you pick up from food and drink is actually through your nose, not your tastebuds.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2012 @ 5:18pm

      Re: Taste Is Actually (Mostly) Smell

      That may be true for some tastes, but not all? I don't think I smell saltiness or spicy or sweet.

      But definitely the aroma of things affects taste.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Beta (profile), 6 Jul 2012 @ 6:06pm

    "...this research will allow hot sauce companies to scientifically claim to use the hottest known peppers."

    ...Which will have nothing at all to do with how the sauces actually taste, but will appeal to the machismo of those consumers who pride themselves on their insensitive palates. Maybe they'll be stocked in the same aisle with the super-long hot dogs, Mach-5 razors and Rogaine.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 7 Jul 2012 @ 5:18am

    I love eating Asian. ;)

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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