Our ability to perceive flavor begins before birth, and depends on many factors throughout life.

BY HELEN BAUCH

When we sit down to share a meal together, will we really all have the same meal? How we taste things is very personal and may very well be as individual as our fingerprints! To quote Diane Ackerman, author of “A Natural History of the Senses”: “No two of us taste the same plum.”

The cause of cravings
Why do we lust for that perfect dish we enjoyed at our favorite restaurant last year? Perhaps simply because the flavor experience was so very pleasant and we want to try it again, which is the response to many positive stimuli. Or it may be a reflection of a more deep-seated need.

The cravings of pregnant women are well-documented and likely physiologically based. Author Diane Ackerman states, “The increased blood volume of a pregnant woman lowers her sodium level, and as a result she doesn’t taste saltiness as easily as she did when she wasn’t pregnant; she may crave really salty foods, like the legendary pickle.”

Neurobiologists suspect that endorphins, the pain-killing neurochemicals responsible for the fabled “runner’s high,” control our inclination toward certain kinds of foods. One of our strongest cravings is for sweets, particularly when we are under stress. What we may really be craving is the endorphin rush.

It is speculated that a craving may be a self-protective mechanism driven by physiology. If a person is in true need nutritionally, it seems one yen or another will take over food choices.

In some instances, a country’s cuisine appears to protect its populace from regional illnesses. In “Consuming Passions,” Pete Far and George Armelagos state that Ethiopian chow, a chili-like dish, has been shown to inhibit staphylococcus, salmonella and other microorganisms. In hot climates, many of the dishes include high levels of hot peppers that contain capsaicin, which makes one sweat, thus lowering the body temperature.

In some places in Africa, fish is eaten wrapped in a banana leaf, the acidity of which dissolves the fish bones and makes the calcium in them digestible. The French practice of cooking fish with sorrel has the same effect.

The super-taster phenomenon
Linda Bartoshuk, Yale University psychologist, reports that there is tremendous genetic variation in our ability to taste. Super-tasters have many more taste buds and taste more intensely than those known as non-tasters. If you are a super-taster, you are born with a different anatomy, with many more fungiform papillae, or little sensors that hold taste buds on the tongue. This excess of fungiform papillae means super-tasters actually “feel” foods more intensely. Bartoshuk says this is “like reaching up and feeling something with 500 fingers as opposed to 50.”

Valerie Duffy, who collaborates with Bartoshuk, finds that super-taster women rate fat as creamier than tasters or non-tasters, a sensation resulting from the “feel” of fat rather than its taste. Yet they also feel more “burn” from substances such as ginger, alcohol, the carbon dioxide in soda and the capsaicin in chili peppers. Bitter tastes bitterer; salt a bit saltier, sour sharper and some sweets sweeter. Super-tasters may actually avoid strong tastes — especially bitter ones like grapefruit, coffee, beer or broccoli — and perhaps shrink their dietary horizons.

Bartoshuk has found that about 25 percent of the U. S. population are super-tasters, 50 percent are tasters and 25 percent are non-tasters. Women are more likely than men to be super-tasters.

Sense of smell
Older diners often cannot smell as acutely as younger diners. While the elderly may think they’ve lost their sense of taste, it may actually be a decrease in their sense of smell that affects their eating experience. Smell losses outnumber actual taste problems by a ratio of 3 to 1.

At birth, a continuous sheet of mucus-covered smell receptors, called olfactory epithelium, covers a wide area of your upper nasal cavities inside the bridge of your nose. But by the time you reach your 30s, the olfactory epithelium has decreased in area. In addition, people naturally lose some ability to discriminate among odors beginning in their 60s, says Dr. Susan Schiffman of the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University in Durham, N.C. This can impair their appreciation of food. Also, the mouth’s ability to feel the fattiness of foods like butter and ice cream declines somewhat as the years go by.

Because people with better olfaction appear to experience more frequent cravings, it is not surprising that the elderly, who often have reduced olfactory function, tend to report fewer cravings than young adults do. While a monotonous diet produces increased cravings in young adults, the elderly are relatively unaffected by a boring diet. However, this factor might contribute to reduced dietary variety in foods selected by the elderly, possibly compromising their nutritional status.

Turn down the volume
“I’ll have a side order of earplugs, please.” This headline from a research journal, Audiology Today, sums up the cacophony in many restaurants. Street noise, cell phones, wailing children, hard surfaces and clattering dishes all combine to create what could be called “Clamourous Cuisine.”

Noisiness has its defenders. Some restaurant designers claim that noise is an important element when creating a vibrant and exciting ambience. Granted, noise means action and energy but it inevitably must have an effect on taste. As all sensory experience is enhanced by concentration, noise will assuredly have a detrimental impact on taste because it is so distracting.

Drink a glass of wine standing at a crowded noisy bar; then drink the same glass of wine in a quiet environment with all of your focus, and they are two entirely different experiences.

A mother’s choice
There are huge differences in the way children respond to foods. What factors determine what a child will like to eat?

For starters, children have more taste buds than adults. They have taste buds on their tongue, cheeks and the roof of their mouth. Their nerves are intact, as they have had little or no dentistry or anesthesia.

When kids stick their noses up at spinach and ask for sweets, perhaps Mother Nature intended it that way. Sweet foods in nature, such as fruit and mother’s milk, are rich in the calories infants and children need for growth; bitter-tasting plants and berries may be a warning of poison and thus prompt the child’s rejection.

But even before a child is born, the fetus has taste buds. Taste buds first appear at seven or eight weeks and are functioning by the third trimester of pregnancy.

What other factors determine what a child likes to eat? According to researchers with the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, exposure to flavors either through amniotic fluid or in breast milk can influence a child’s taste preferences.

“Very early flavor experiences may provide the foundation for cultural differences,” Monell’s Dr. Julie A. Mennella has reported. “Mother’s milk reflects the culture in which the child is born.”

In one study, two groups of pregnant women drank either water or carrot juice during pregnancy and lactation. Researchers studied the infants as they ate about four weeks after mothers had introduced cereal into their child’s diet. In two separate sessions, the infants were fed cereal prepared with either water or carrot juice. After each session, mothers rated how much their infants had enjoyed the food.

According to results, infants who had been exposed to the flavor of carrots during pregnancy ate more of the carrot-flavored cereal than infants who were not exposed to the flavor of carrots. These infants also appeared to enjoy the carrot-flavored cereal more, according to the mothers.

“These findings are the first experimental evidence that exposure to a flavor, either pre- or post-natally, influences the infants’ acceptance and enjoyment of similarly flavored foods,” reports Dr. Coren P. Jagnow, the study’s lead author.

Learning to like it
Flavor preferences are both innate and learned. While the liking of sweet tastes is present at birth, the preference for bitter tastes is more likely acquired.

Monell’s studies indicate that innate preferences for more complex nutrients such as starch and oil help guide selection of nutritious foods. The learned association between a flavor and the nutritive value of a food can shape food preference. Flavors previously experienced along with the intake of food are preferred to flavors that have been delivered independently of nutrients.

Our cultures encourage or discourage us from acquiring certain tastes. Rarely does a person react positively to alcohol at the first sip. In our culture, alcohol consumption is associated with sophistication and glamour, and therefore many young people are highly motivated to continue to consume it, finally “acquiring the taste.”

Hot stuff
We probably all cringed at our first taste of spicy food. So why do we continue to eat foods that actually inflict pain? In a study done at the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, Dr. Paul Rozin hypothesized that eating spicy foods releases endorphins. Afterwards, the endorphins create an urge to eat another round of hot and fiery foods. As we age and our sense of smell diminishes, we seek out other ways to stimulate our sense of “taste” and appetite. One way to accomplish this is to add hot ingredients to our food.

Oral irritation now and then pleasurably broadens the spectrum of flavors for the aging. Besides the kick of chili, other irritants, such as the gingerols in ginger, piperin in black pepper and the various isothiocyanates in onions, mustard, radishes and horseradish, can create sensations that compensate for the loss of smell.

Chilies can help overcome the lack of appetite that results from lack of smell. Studies on rats show that capsaicin injections keep the creatures eating for longer. What happens is that the chemical interferes with the ability of nerves to send “fullness” messages to the brain when fats and carbohydrates wash down the stomach.

The portion problem
The 24-oz. sirloin steak. The eight-layer chocolate cake. All-you-can-eat buffets. Portions have grown larger and larger as restaurants continually attempt to deliver more perceived value to the consumer.

How do large portions affect flavor? An old French proverb states “A good meal ought to begin with hunger.” Physiologically, here’s what happens: Appetite is defined as feeding arousal at low levels; appetite stimulates consumption. Hunger begins at higher levels of arousal. The greater the stimulation of this sensory pathway, the greater the extent that mental resources are shifted towards food-seeking behavior.

After food is consumed, satiation signals serve as a negative feedback loop to stop eating. In other words, normal eating is predominantly controlled by signals, perceived to be “from the stomach.” We know that as we get full, food loses its appeal. As we reach fullness, our sense of taste becomes less acute and the enjoyment of the food we eat diminishes.

Huge portions are a double-edged sword. The initial visual impact screams value to the hungry diner. On the other hand, consuming large quantities of food smacks of gluttony to many of us, overfills the diner and results in a rapid and total fall-off in interest. Diners also are not likely to order multiple courses when the portions are so large.

“Hit the road, Jack”?
That great Hot and Sour Chicken was so fabulous in Hong Kong. Back in New York, it’s prepared with the same ingredients, in the same basic manner, but why doesn’t it have the same flavor? Well, many foods just don’t travel well! They are at their best in a particular environment, usually the one in which they were created.

Does the clam chowder eaten wharfside while you’re vacationing on the coast of Maine taste the same as the one served in your neighborhood cafe? It’s the same recipe, but the differences are in the presentation, the temperature of the food, the humidity — which affects the amount of aroma you perceive — the background sounds and your interest level.

When asked about opening a Balinese restaurant in the United States, Bali chef and cooking instructor Heinz von Holzen expressed serious doubt. He described a recent experience preparing Balinese dishes for a culinary extravaganza at a large hotel in Singapore.

“Nothing tasted the same in that glass and marble tower,” he remarked. “Our food is meant to be served on banana leaves and eaten with the fingers. It’s at its best at home.”

After all, home is where our lifelong relationship with flavor begins.

ILLUSTRATION BY NORMA PRAUSE

"As soon as an edible body has been put into the mouth, it is seized upon – gases, moisture, and all – without possibility of retreat. Lips stop whatever might try to escape; the teeth bite and break it; saliva drenches it; the tongue mashes and churns it; a breathlike sucking pushes it toward the gullet; the tongue lifts up to make it slide and slip; the sense of smell appreciates it as it passes the nasal channel, and it is pulled down into the stomach to be submitted to sundry baser transformations without, in this whole metamorphosis, a single atom or drop or particle having been missed by the powers of appreciation of the taste sense." - J. A. Brillat-Savarin, 1825.

The “appreciation of the taste sense” is indeed, the savoring of flavoring. Our taste sense functions as a gatekeeper for the gustatory experience. Aspects of flavor provide us with important information about the food that we are consuming. Our senses can warn us to slam the gate shut and keep us from ingesting harmful foods but of more interest to the foodservice industry, they can provide some of the greatest pleasure that humans can experience.

Most food professionals are fully aware of the importance of flavor in foods, but frequently unaware of the “nuts and bolts” of flavor evaluation. An understanding of the physiology involved and the tools used to conduct a comprehensive objective evaluation of food flavor can be extremely useful to a foodservice operator.

What happens when we eat?
“An epicure eats with his brain as well as his mouth” Charles Lamb

Flavor is the sum total of all the sensory experiences we have when food enters the mouth. The total perception is a combination of aroma, taste, feelings, sights and sounds. All of our senses are involved.

When we grind coffee beans, open an oven full of baking bread or unscrew the top of a cinnamon jar, we experience aroma and develop expectations from that aroma. Aroma or smell is the first of the many sensory experiences we have when we eat and it provides the most information of all the senses about the food. We can only sense five tastes in the mouth whereas the nose can recognize thousands of aromas.

When we begin to smell, the olfactory epithelium, the receptor for smell in the brain has been called to attention. Depending on the aroma, a message is sent out to other areas in the brain…it might be a danger message if what we smell is offensive, such as a harsh chemical smell, or hopefully a pleasure message. As Malcolm de Chazal in Sens Plastique colorfully described it, “A voracious sense of smell leans forward on its nostrils like a glutton eating with his elbows on the table.” Next time you smell a strong aroma, pay close attention to your body and you will see that there is a noticeable physiological response. We are put on sensory alert. The brain is saying, “Get ready, something’s coming”. Salivation begins; we perk up and pay attention to our mouths. Next, food enters our mouths. The aroma experience continues because as we chew food, aroma is forced up through the back of the throat to the olfactory area.

Then we taste. In its purest definition, taste is a very narrow experience and includes only the four basic tastes – sweet, sour, salty, bitter and a fifth, called umami. Known in Japan for years and still controversial, umami, a response to the glutamate ion, is best described as tasty or savory, the “yummy” taste. The four basic tastes are physiologically well documented and are detected by our taste buds but much is still unknown about where and how the umami taste is sensed. Taste buds are sensitive receptors scattered about in the mouth and throat, soft palate and particularly on the tongue. Specialized for each basic taste, they are situated on visible structures known as papillae, the little bumps that are quite visible on your tongue.

That’s it! The basic tastes are the entirety of what we sense from our mouths. All other experiences during the evaluation of flavor are not taste, but are related to odor, the feeling factors -texture, pressure, pain and temperature, and finally, sight and sound. Feeling factors can be in the nose, mouth or throat. Some of the nose feelings that are commonly experienced are the nose-clearing sensation that we get from hot mustard or horseradish. Without this experience we know the pungency associated with freshness is missing from the product. Tingling and pungency are clues that ground, black pepper is fresh. Some of the common mouth-feelings are the astringency or puckering that comes with strong tea or cranberry juice and the mouth-drying that we experience when we eat green bananas. Pay attention to feelings or an absence of feelings, as they are important when critically evaluating foods and often provide important clues about food quality.

Our Mother’s told us that our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. We do eat with our eyes and the appearance of food greatly enhances or detracts from the sensory experience. This phenomenon has been backed up by scientific studies, which prove the relationship, for one, between the intensity of color and perception of flavor. Cakes made with darker yellow egg yolks were evaluated as moister than those prepared with lighter yolk color even though the formulas were exactly alike. Fruit flavored beverages often give more flavor cues from color than can possibly be derived from the actual beverage flavor i.e. we know its grape because it’s purple. Peppermint is pink, spearmint is green and if the colors are switched many people cannot identify them correctly.

A final consideration in foodservice is the utensils that are used with food. They can significantly influence how we perceive flavor. My mother would not drink tea from a thick cup…she claimed it didn’t look good, didn’t feel good and so it didn’t taste good. And she was right. She couldn’t slurp like she was accustomed to with the thick cup and missed the aromatics. How many of us could truly appreciate a glass of fine wine served in a plastic glass?

Taste, aroma, textures, mouth feeling, appearance and the physical presentation of the food all contribute to the total final sensory experience of flavor and all must be considered when evaluating foods.

What is Good Flavor?
“There are those who have tried the Bat and found it tastes like a housemouse, only mousier.” Anonymous, The Spectator 6th June, 1894.

In the food world, with few exceptions, we are not able to quantify and categorize flavor by a scientific or even a quasi-scientific gauge. We can measure some attributes objectively, for example analytical methods for salt content and the use of the Scoville scale to quantify the heat level of chili peppers. Food professionals however generally agree on a “pattern of good flavor” which is demonstrated by brand leaders whose products have been successful over the long term. They all share certain characteristics.

First there should be immediate recognition of what the product is supposed to be. Fernand Point, one of the most influential chefs of our times, of La Pyramide restaurant in Vienne, France, said simply, ”Foods should taste and look like what they are.” The flavor should have early appropriate impact. Next, there should be a rapid development of full-bodied flavor – a kind of fanning out of the flavor. The whole effect should be pleasing and blended, with nothing in particular sticking out. Finally, there should be no off-notes. Nothing should be encountered that you wouldn’t expect and there should be no aftertastes unless appropriate. This is the minimal expectation of good flavor. Beyond this basic pattern, there are endless possibilities.

One man’s meat is indeed another man’s poison. Individual tastes vary widely and a key word in the pattern of good flavor is that it be pleasing. Flavors are pleasing or not based on physiological, psychological and cultural variables. There is a strong cultural determinant to what is a pleasing flavor to one person and not to another. Although this question of whether a flavor is pleasing to another taster is difficult to judge, usually one is evaluating flavors within a limited range of personal eating experience (i.e. foods from the menu of your restaurant) and therefore based on experience, you can be comfortable making such a judgement. When the question of “pleasing flavor” with a wide variety of consumers arises, that is the time to consider professional sensory evaluation.

How to Evaluate Flavor
“Seeing is deceiving. It’s eating that’s believing.” James Thurber, Further Fables for our Times 1956

When we taste critically, our objective should be to collect as much information as possible about the food or beverage. Evaluate food in an unsentimental way, free from influence of brand names and advertising. This is known as a blind tasting and the technique should be employed in every situation where it is possible. Control as many variables as you can. Code samples for identification. Evaluate in a quiet environment where you can concentrate without interruption.

The first step in evaluating flavor is to smell by taking three short sniffs. That’s all you need to get an impression. If you sniff more than this, you will experience what is known as olfactory adaptation. Most of us are familiar with the phenomenon from entering a freshly painted room. The first impression is overwhelming but in a short period, you don’t notice it any longer. The same thing occurs with smelling a food sample. If you over-smell, your sensory mechanism just quits! So take three short sniffs and then rest the nose by moving away from the sample and breathing fresh air. Then return to the sample. If you are keeping track, write down what you smell in the order that you smell it.

Next, taste the sample. Get a big enough mouthful to cover the entire surface of the tongue as well as other areas of the mouth. If the sample is liquid, slurp it so that aromatics can travel up the nasal passages to the odor receptor area. Evaluate foods at the temperature at which they are normally served. Write down what you taste. Use water (not milk or club soda or beer) between samples to cleanse the palate and prepare for the next sample.

At some point, try to eat an entire portion of a food once you’ve decided the flavor is satisfactory from your small evaluation taste. Sometimes a flavor can be very pleasing in small amounts but overwhelming and out of balance in a full portion. This is often overlooked in foodservice.

Look for aftertastes, inappropriate notes and after-textures. One minute after swallowing, check what you taste. There should be a pleasant tailing-off of flavor and no lingering undesirable flavors or mouth-feelings.

If you evaluate certain foods that are important to your business repeatedly using these techniques, you will soon develop a specific vocabulary and an intensity scale of your own relative to each particular food. For example some of the words used in vanilla evaluations are leather, beanie, resinous, pruney, fruity and woody. Olive oil evaluators use hundreds of terms like flowery, bitter, sour, bland, fruity, peppery, nutty and biting to describe various attributes of the oil.

Critical Flavor Evaluation in Foodservice

Flavor plays an ever increasing role in contemporary foodservice. Fortunes have been made by operators who understand and utilize the power of flavor. Simple moves such as the addition of “new” flavors to old favorites have developed new profits. Menu items such as garlic-mashed potatoes and portabello mushroom meatloaf attract new customers and drive new business.

The use of controlled, critical evaluation of flavor can play an important role in foodservice product development in the discovery of exciting new flavor experiences and the protection of existing food quality and high standards.

Contact Food Smarts

Copyright © 1999 Food Smarts.   All Rights Reserved
1119 S. Mission Rd., Suite 317,   Fallbrook, California   92028-3225

Site Design: Premier Web Designs