There is more to taste than meets the eye (or is it the tongue)!!!!!

We all know that taste is sweet, salty, bitter and sour. It is also umami. However taste is not just about these five “flavours” but about the feel in the mouth. Taste is also very closely impacted by smell.

Combined with this are our memory. We see potato crisps and expect them to be salty as a base, and will have a strange reaction if we find them to be sweet. The crunchy sound of chips being eaten is something we associate with a savoury taste, so even the sound of food being eaten and serve has an impact on what a food tastes like.

Adding to the complexity of taste is perception, which is often affected by our culture and upbringing. We all have different perceptions of what we like and trying to meet this is an impossible task for food manufacturers.

One of the issues that food businesses have in product development is when reformulating a well known product to reduce it’s fat content. Fat has a major impact on taste, so changing it’s level will impact on both what the product feels like in the mouth as well as on the taste of it.

Tastebuds are incredible and have a life of 10 – 16 days, so regeneration is happening constantly.

Considering that taste is perhaps the most important reason why people eat certain foods, it has been extremely difficult to develop a single piece of equipment that can successfully and consistently measure taste in a lab situation.

A new technology has been developed to record and analyse the sound of the tongue rubbing against food to determine the creaminess of the food. This new technology is called “acoustic tribology’. This will be very helpful but will never be able to fully replicate the amazing thing that is taste.

An artificial nose has been created which is having some success in identifying smells in a lab situation, but to date there has not been a similar piece of equipment to artificially replicate the tongue, and it is probably unlikely to ever happen.