Sensory Analysis and Decision-Making in Food

Sensory Analysis

• A scientific discipline used to evoke, measure, analyze, and interpret reactions to the characteristics of food as they are perceived by the senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.
• It's a central tool in the decision-making process for food quality and positioning.
• The current challenges include food restriction, population growth, and climate change.

Decision-Making Process

• It's a mixture of sensorial, conscious, rational, and emotional factors.
• The decision process has shifted from pure instinct to a mix of rational and emotional decision-making.
• Emotion initially served as an evolutionary tool.
• The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is involved in decision-making, integrating sensory, emotional, and cognitive information.

Gut Instinct

• The Enteric Nervous System (ENS) is the "second brain" and is responsible for gut feelings.

Sensory Input

• Food characteristics are perceived through appearance, flavor, aroma, texture, and sound.
• Flavor is a complex combination of taste, aroma, and trigeminal sensations (mouthfeel).
• There are five basic tastes: bitterness, saltiness, sourness, sweetness, and umami.
• New tastes include fat and starchy.
• The human senses include sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste, and gut feeling, but do not include extrasensory perception (ESP).

Sensory Perception

• Perception is influenced by factors such as the color of the cup, cutlery weight, and cultural factors.
• The halo effect occurs when one attribute influences the evaluation of other attributes.
• Order effect refers to the influence of previous samples on the evaluation of subsequent samples.
• Central tendency error occurs when consumers tend to use the middle sample as a reference point.
• Contrast and convergence effects occur when samples are very different or similar.
• Cultural variations influence food terminology, familiarity, and acceptance.
• Physiological factors such as adaptation, perceptual interactions, and physical condition influence perception.

Discrimination Tests

• The Munsell color system is used to differentiate color parameters: Hue, Value (lightness), and Chroma (color purity).
• Ishihara Test detects color deficiency, particularly red-green.

Texture

• Perceive texture through touch, sound, mouthfeel, and visual cues.
• The tactile oral perception includes trigeminal sensations, which are the physical and chemical sensations in the mouth.
• Texture can change during storage, influenced by factors like temperature and moisture.

Odor Perception

• Odor is perceived through the olfactory system, which detects odor molecules in the nasal cavity.
• The orthonasal pathway involves smelling through the nose, while the retronasal pathway involves smelling through the mouth.
• Aroma refers to the odor perceived through the retronasal pathway.

Gustatory Sense

• Taste is perceived through the gustatory system, which detects dissolved molecules on the taste buds.
• Taste buds send signals to the brain, resulting in taste perception.
• Flavor is a combination of taste, aroma, and trigeminal sensations.

Sensory Bases

• Psychological factors can influence sensory perception.
• Distraction errors can occur due to stimuli outside the test environment.
• Habituation errors can occur due to repeated evaluation of similar samples.
• Stimulus-logical errors occur when judgments are based on irrelevant information.